The St. Albert Flyers started the Alberta Minor Midget AAA Hockey League provincial qualifier with a disappointing loss Thursday.
The second-place Flyers (30-7-1) faced the lowest-ranked squad in their round-robin draw and wound up on the losing end of a 3-2 score to MLAC Elite Sportswear in Spruce Grove.
While losing the first game in the North Cup tournament is not the end of the world, Flyers’ assistant coach Bill Pratt believes it does make the task more difficult.
“It’s not lose and go home so at the end of the day we aren’t out of it yet but at the same time in a tournament format like this it’s not good,” said Pratt. “We thought we would have to run the table to get in and now our destiny is kind of out of our hands.”
If the Flyers hope to advance to the provincial final against the Red Deer Chiefs, certain aspects of their game will have to return to form.
“Plain and simple we have to come to compete. Our game is just going out and executing and forechecking in defensive and offence zones and things like that. When we do those things more often than not we are successful,” said Pratt.
The Flyers beat seventh-place MLAC (12-20-6) all four times in the regular season with a goal differential of 22-11, but managed only two goals on 20 shots in the playoff match. Luc Lalor scored in the first and Taylor Fontaine connected in the third.
The Flyers trailed 2-1 after 20 minutes and fell behind by two goals early in the third. Tanner McCorriston (16 saves in 44 minutes) started in net and Landon Bow (six saves) finished the contest.
Based on their league performance, a big advantage the Flyers have over their opponents in the playoffs is their ability to win games based solely on defence.
“There is the old clichĂ© that defence wins championships and we are fortunate enough that our strong suit starts with our goaltending outwards,” said Pratt. “Anytime you have some of the best goaltenders in the league it’s very helpful in terms of your confidence.”
McCorriston and Bow combined to post the best goals-against in league play at 87.
“We haven’t had to ride one guy throughout the season and as a result we never had one guy who is tired because he had to play 90 percent of the starts,” said Pratt.
The team to beat in the tournament is the first-place Sherwood Park Squires (32-1-5), who are competing in pool A against the fourth-place Leduc Oil Kings (22-11-5), sixth-place Spruce Grove PAC Saints (16-18-4) and eighth-place Fort Saskatchewan Rangers (12-21-5).
“They have good goaltending and defencemen, are strong and move the puck well and can roll all their lines when they get going,” Pratt said “They are really tough to play but we’re not afraid of them and we want to meet them in the semifinals or final.”
Playoff action continued Friday for the Flyers against the fifth-place Lloydminster Rage (20-10-8), but the score was unavailable at press time.
The last game in pool B for the Flyers is against the third-place SSAC Bulldogs (27-9-2) today at 11:45 a.m. at Tri Leisure Centre. The Bulldogs defeated the Rage 5-1 Thursday.
The top two teams in both pools qualify for tonight’s semifinals at 7:15 and 7:45 p.m. at Tri Leisure.
The final goes Sunday at 1:45 p.m. at Grant Fuhr Arena.
