Jacques to play for Team Canada!

[SlapshotWrangler 864]

SASKATOON - The World Junior Championships are coming up soon. The time for the world’s best young players to faceoff in epic battles while representing their country. Wild goaltender Jacques Lafontaine was among the few players who were selected to represent our wonderful country in this season’s World Juniors. He will be playing the backup goalie behind Fang Flashback, Calgary’s young netminder. 

 

“It’s an honor to be selected to represent Canada in the World Junior Championships. It’s always amazing to represent your home country, especially in big tournaments like this one. Even though I’m a backup, I hope I can help my team out and make saves when I need to. We have a strong roster and we’ll do well. Fang is a great goalie and I know he’ll be good for us.”

 

The Wild goalie will also be joined by current Wild players Damien Wolfe, Kristopher McDagg and David OQuinn. Saskatoon fans also have one more name to cheer for in RJ Jubis, who is in the VHL with the Calgary Wranglers. 

 

“Yeah, it’ll be nice to see some familiar faces as we play. Wolfe, Dagger [McDagg], and Quinny [OQuinn] are all great players and it’s good to know I have a few players I know. It’ll also be fun to meet the other players and get to know one another. Most of these guys I only see when we’re going head-to-head, so it’ll be cool to play with them and get to know them. It’ll also be weird to go against some of my teammates on the Wild but I’ll get used to it. I hope they don’t have any hard feelings after the tournament when we kick their asses.”

 

The Saskatoon goalie has proven himself to be a presence in the net as he has the most wins and is high on the top 10 list in other positive goalie stats. However, that can be attributed to the fact he is playing for the most dominating team in the VHLM right now. If it’s the most dominating team in the history of the league is a debatable topic. So there was quite a bit of questioning about if he was going to be selected as the backup goalie.

 

“Yeah, honestly, I thought they’d choose Spyro or something,” Jacques admitted during a press conference that happened right after the news of his selection was released. 

 

“Spyro is a real damn good goalie. I’ll admit it, he’s a more experienced and smarter goalie. If it wasn’t me, I’d probably choose him as the backup goalie for Team Canada. He’s a real good player. So I couldn’t believe it when I received the news that I was selected for the Junior team.”

 

Despite that, he says he will play his absolute hardest for the team. He says his job as a backup is making saves and that is exactly what he plans to do.

 

“Again, I’m representing my home country and that is really special. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity so I’d better not waste it. Especially with the entirety of Canada, no, the world watching us.”