With eight days until their next game, the Heat didn't want to stew on a losing streak for more than a week.
"It might be season-changing," said Garret Sparks, who occupied the crease for the Heat in the come-from-behind win. "A tough plane ride home last night would've been devastating, I think. I just knew we couldn't afford that."
The game had started on a similar path to the previous six meetings with Laval. Stockton hung tough, even dictated play for periods of time, but the Heat were unable to find that opening goal. Eight minutes into the second period, Yannick Veilleux redirected a puck past Sparks to give the Rocket a 1-0 edge.
A tired team, but not yet a defeated one, Stockton was playing in its seventh-straight road game, and its 22nd game in a 44-day marathon to start the season. The opening to the campaign was so taxing that the Heat had not held a full practice in more than a week, the club trying to keep as fresh as possible through the end of the road stint.
Here, in the Bell Centre in Montreal, was a defining moment for a team that had gone from the hottest in the AHL to one of the coldest in the blink of an eye.
Nine minutes after Laval drew first blood, a turnover at Stockton's defensive blueline developed into potentially the fulcrum of the campaign. Connor Mackey fired the puck forward, tipped by Dmitry Zavgorodniy onto the stick of Adam Ruzicka, who had snuck behind the Rocket defensemen and went in alone on Michael McNiven.
Blocker side, top shelf, tie game.
"It was a feeling we've had a lot against Laval, to be solid but in a position where we're headed into the third period down a goal and having trouble finding goals," said head coach Cail MacLean. "(Ruzicka's goal) settled the guys down. It generated the feeling of 'what we're doing tonight is paying off.' We were on the road, tied going into the third. That's a good position."
Then, the Heat had to weather a storm. The Rocket threw everything at Stockton early in the third, looking for the go-ahead score. Sparks came up big several times, and eventually Byron Froese connected from a sharp angle with just over three minutes on the clock for the go-ahead goal before Eetu Tuulola punctuated the effort with an empty-netter.
As the bench boss points out, it was a full team effort.
"Everyone cares about each other in that room. We were working, but we weren't getting that extraordinary play or the right performance from the right person at the right time. (Tuesday) it was collectively, everybody stepping up," said MacLean.
"It was a (Koletrane) Wilson block. It was a Garret Sparks save. It was a Byron Froese late goal. It was a Glenn Gawdin fight. It was just a lot of things, a lot of contributions from guys on behalf of their team."
That tough plane ride home that Sparks was thinking about never came, and now with two more points in the bank and a losing skid snapped, the Heat can head into a week without a game with less weight to bear.
"(Winning) was huge," said MacLean. "It gives us a mental boost going into our last home stand. The one thing you love about competition like that, and having the struggles that we've had, is it forces you to get better. That set at home against Laval, then the set in (Montreal), it forced us to dig into our game, find ways to improve and push each other. Then you get to the end of it and you finish with a win, now you've got some habits you've been working on building and you're in a good position.
"It can be season-changing because you've overcome something. I think we're in a position to move forward really well."
