The St. Albert Flyers will play a deciding game in their playoff series against the Spruce Grove PAC Saints after Wednesday’s 4-2 loss at Akinsdale Arena.
Sunday’s face-off is 8:15 p.m. at Stony Plain. The winner advances to the north conference final in the Alberta Minor Midget Hockey League.
St. Albert took the season series against the Saints 2-1 and beat them once in the playoffs in Spruce Grove by a score of 3-2 in game two of the best-of-five semifinal.
“We’ve defeated them in their barn before so there's no reason we can't do it again. It comes down to heart,” said head coach Rick Thomson. “They finished second [in the standings and the Flyers were third]. Everybody's saying they're a better hockey team and I think the pressure is on them. They're the returning champs but we’re going to try to steal the series on them.”
Evan Warmington said special teams will be key again in game five and the Flyers have to do a better job of getting bodies to the net. It will be a challenge, as they have been boxed out well so far from the low slot.
“We have to win that battle if we want to move on. We have to keep banging bodies and getting pucks to the net and trying to put one home,” said the Flyers forward. “It's a bit frustrating but if we move pucks quick and tape-to-tape to get away from pressure [we can open it up].”
“We're not generating enough shots right now,” added Thomson. “No matter who's on the ice, big or small ... we don't send one guy, it has to be a team thing. Whoever's role it is at that time, they have to be there.”
In game four St. Albert was outshot 27-20 despite 10 penalties against the Saints and only one power play goal. The Flyers had seven minors and were perfect on the penalty kill. Warmington and Liam McNamara scored for the home team.
The first three goals by the Saints came by the time the game was 3:40 old, a deficit the Flyers couldn’t recover from. However, Thomson was happy with how his team played after that.
“We got behind the eight-ball real quick so we had a big hole to dig through but as the game went through we worked hard and clawed ourselves back into it,” Thomson said. “We could’ve got a lucky bounce and it would've been a different game.”
After losing game one 4-0, Warmington said the Flyers responded well to win the next two and could have earned the series victory Wednesday.
“We tried to put that first game behind us. We came out stronger and battled hard,” he said. “[In game four] we didn't come out with the effort we wanted to. They had to play for their lives or they would have been done. They played strong.”
Special teams were the difference in games two and three (Tuesday’s 6-4 win in St. Albert], as three of the Flyers’ nine goals over that span came with the man advantage, on top of game four’s power play marker.
“We got the power play goals and it was working [Wednesday], but it wasn't working as well as we needed it to,” Thomson said.
