The race for fourth place in the AJHL’s southern division has been, in a word, abysmal.
Although two teams battling for it presumably want to seize fourth spot and secure home rink advantage in the first round of the playoffs, the Canmore Eagles have won just twice in 14 games since the year began – securing 47 points on the year.
Meanwhile, the Drumheller Dragons have been marginally better, winning five times in 11 games, including a handful of blowouts for a 45-point year, thus far.
On Friday (Feb. 5), the Eagles did manage to find a new way to lose, as the lowly Calgary Canucks, who are eight points back of the Eagles, stymied them again, 3-2.
This time, it was Canucks’ goaltender Logan Drackett playing spoiler as he stopped 31 shots for the win.
“We got beat by a hot goalie tonight,” said Eagles head coach and general manager Andrew Milne.
“We didn’t start the game with as much excitement as we should have, but we were hampered by too many early penalty calls.”
The Eagles were assessed five penalties in the first 13 minutes of the game, including a game misconduct to Braden Saretsky, and a misconduct for Matt Forchuk. The Dragons were only able to score once on the powerplay in the first period, but it sapped all momentum from the Eagles attack.
Forchuck tied the game at the 1:19 mark of the second period and Coy Prevost gave the Eagles a brief lead to start the third period, while the team poured on the gas. But the Canucks scored a power play goal of their own to tie it up and Ben Assad scored less than a minute into overtime to secure the win.
“We only played hard for 20 minutes and that wasn’t enough to get two points. That’s the frustrating part for the coaching staff. How can we play so well in the third period and dominate the way we did, but not have the confidence to start the game the right way? It blows my mind,” Milne said.
The team was able to salvage a valuable point, and hold on to fourth in the division.
The Eagles were not satisfied with that effort, and had an offensive outburst against the Olds Grizzlys on Saturday (Feb. 6) in Olds, winning 6-4. Prevost scored twice, while Logan Ferguson, Nolan Kurylo, Adam Tisdale and Colby Livingstone scored for the Eagles, and goalie Ryan Bontorin picked up the win.
“We played a fundamentally sound game,” Milne said. “We played it simple and got rewarded. We talked a lot before the game about doing things the easy way and not making it hard on ourselves.
“We bent a little bit in the third period but didn’t break. Livingstone was awesome tonight and showed us the level of player he is capable of being. He will be a valuable asset and a player that provides scoring down the stretch if he continues to play like that,” Milne said.
The Eagles get a chance at revenge Saturday (Feb. 13) at home against the Canucks, and then have an afternoon Family Day bout scheduled with the Calgary Mustangs at 2 p.m. Facing off against teams below them in the standings, the Eagles want to build a cushion in the standings.
