After a successful regular season, the St Albert Flyers turned in a disappointing performance in the Alberta Minor Midget AAA Hockey League playoffs.
The second-place Flyers (30-7-1) went 1-1-1 in pool B round-robin action in the North Cup tournament in Spruce Grove and failed to make the semifinal round.
The Flyers lost 3-2 to the seventh-place MLAC (12-20-6), settled for a 3-3 draw against the fifth-place Lloydminster Rage (20-10-8) and defeated the third-place SSAC Bulldogs (27-9-2) in the last game of the provincial qualifier 5-2.
The lacklustre performances against MLAC and Lloydminster were enough to drop the Flyers out of contention. The final outcome was in direct contrast to their first game against MLAC, according to assistant coach Bill Pratt.
“That’s a game where you have to beat the teams you have to beat. Realistically we were supposed to beat the Maple Leafs but they executed a good game plan,” said Pratt. “Their goaltender arguably stole them the game, they played good on special teams and in a tournament format like that those types of abnormalities can happen.”
The Flyers did go out on somewhat of a good note in beating SSAC.
“We are disappointed on how we started but somehow we were able to get over the bad locker room and the hard luck and put together a really good performance on Saturday morning,” said Pratt. “Unfortunately it didn’t all come together for us [in the playoffs] and we only have ourselves to blame for that.”
With the removal of a playoff system in favour of a round-robin tournament, Pratt believes it takes away some of the recognition from a successful regular season.
“It’s always tough because in tournament formats, very frequently the best team doesn’t come out of it. I think history has shown that in this league,” said Pratt. “I have always been a big believer in the playoff system. While the better record doesn’t always win, the team that can better execute for five games can always win and you usually get the cream of the crop that comes out of that.”
Boasting the league’s best defence with 87 goals against, compared to the next best total of 99 by the first-place Sherwood Park Squires (32-1-5), the Flyers were a force to be reckoned with all season. Those statistics, along with their point totals in league play, are reasons why the Flyers’ coaching staff believes the season was still pretty good.
“We achieved a lot of the things we wanted to achieve. At the start of the year it was our goal to finish in the top three and we achieved that,” said Pratt. “Our team also has the goal of always having the lowest goals against and we achieved that. A lot of players also got better and I hope that they had some fun.”
In the North Cup final, the fourth-place Leduc Oil Kings (22-11-5) upset Sherwood Park 3-1. Leduc will now play the Red Deer Chiefs for the provincial title.
