After three games in the best-of-five series, the St. Albert Raiders were facing elimination against the Leduc Oil Kings in the Alberta Midget AAA Hockey League playoffs.
Game four was played Tuesday in Leduc, but the score was unavailable at press time.
A victory by the Raiders would force a fifth and deciding game Thursday at 7 p.m. at Akinsdale Arena.
Head coach Sandro Pisani is confident the Raiders will be successful.
“This is not the time to push the panic button,” he stressed. “We need to make sure we are sticking to our game plan and execute it and if we do that we’ll be fine.”
After winning game one 4-1 at home, the Raiders entered a make-or-break portion of their season after suffering identical losses of 3-2 Friday in Leduc and Sunday in St. Albert.
“At times we deviated from the game plan. They’re also doing a good job of clogging the neutral zone and we continue to force pucks into those areas that caused a lot of turnovers,” said Pisani.
“We really believe we have to get pucks behind their defenceman and wear them down low. That’s part of our game plan. That really doesn’t change, whether we play Leduc or anyone else. We just have to find ways to do it more consistently going forward.”
The chance to play in front of the home crowd with the season on the line is an opportunity his team worked hard for in the regular season. In league play the Raiders were 10-3-2 on St. Albert ice.
“Obviously that’s what you play all year for. We like playing in Akinsdale and I guess right now we’ll just focus on taking care of [Tuesday] night and bringing it back home to Akinsdale,” said Pisani.
In the north division the second-place Raiders (20-10-4) finished four points ahead of Leduc (17-11-6).
The series winner will play the Southside Athletic Club (23-8-3) or Sherwood Park Kings (17-14-3) in the best-of-five north final.
Last year Leduc eliminated the Raiders in five games in the north semifinals.
