The Rockets were one of three teams in the Canadian Hockey League to score over 300 goals during the regular season. The No. 1-ranked team in the CHL at season's end outshot Hull 29-18, but had trouble solving Lafrance, a 20-year-old who has spent his entire four-year career with Hull.
Mathieu Brunelle, Guillaume Labrecque, Jean-Michel Daoust and Olivier Labelle scored for the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League champions in front of a pro-Hull crowd of 9,143 at the 15,399-seat Colisee Pepsi. Phillippe Dupuis had three assists.
The Olympiques scored in the first minute of both the second and third periods for a 3-0 lead. Jesse Schultz replied for Kelowna.
Rockets Kiel McLeod (left) trips Olympiques Mathieu Brunelle during second period action. (CP/Jacques Boissinot)
The Rockets, the Western Hockey League representatives, play their second game in two days on Monday when they face the host Quebec Remparts, who opened the tournament on Saturday with a 4-3 loss to the Ontario Hockey League's Kitchener Rangers.
Monday's game is at 7 p.m. EDT but will be tape delayed nationally until midnight on Rogers Sportsnet. The game will be carried live, however, in Quebec City and Montreal on Rogers Sportsnet East and in Kelowna on the Shaw Preview Channel.
The Olympiques displayed better foot speed in beating the Rockets to the puck and showed more offensive creativity, but ultimately the game belonged to Lafrance, who made three point-blank saves in the first 40 minutes during which Kelowna outshot Hull 18-10 yet trailed 2-0.
Labelle finished a tic-tac-toe passing play for Hull's fourth goal, swooping in front of the net and beating Kelowna goaltender Kelly Guard at 15:13 of the third.
The Rockets had cut Hull's lead to two goals at 6:54 when overage forward Kiel McLeod's no-look pass found Schultz waiting at Lafrance's right and he beat the Hull netminder high glove side at 6:24 of the third.
Guard was unable to corral the puck during a goal-mouth scramble and Daust shot the puck high over a prone Guard and several other bodies to give Hull a 3-0 lead 42 seconds into the third period.
Doug O'Brien dug the puck out of the corner and fed it to Labrecque 35 seconds into the second period. He beat goaltender Guard stick side.
Hull's Phillippe Dupuis, ranked in the second round by NHL Central Scouting for the draft next month, sparked his team with a couple of big hits in the first few minutes to start the game and he also set up Brunelle's goal on a two-on-one in the first period.
McLeod had missed the final two WHL playoff series due to illness, but made it into the lineup on Sunday. Kelowna had some of its best chances when he was on the ice because he creates room with his six-foot-five, 220-pound frame.
Notes - Saturday's opening day crowd of 10,928 at the 15,399-seat Colisee Pepsi set a Memorial Cup record for attendance on the first day. The previous mark was 10,525 at the Ottawa Civic Centre, which was filled to capacity for the first game in 1999. . . . The Olympiques have three players in their lineup considered prospects for the NHL draft: centre Phillippe Dupuis, left-winger Francis Wathier, centre Guillaume Lebrecque.
