After two losses the St. Albert Slash have their backs against the wall against the Edmonton Thunder in the Alberta Major Midget Female Hockey League playoffs.
Game three in the best-of-five north division final is Thursday at 8:45 p.m. at Callingwood Arena.
“We have to focus on winning that one game to get us back into this,” said forward Krystal Reithmayer. “We have to do the little things we’re good at doing.”
After getting shut out 4-0 by the Thunder in game one in Edmonton, the Slash lost 5-3 Sunday in St. Albert.
“They’re a very good team,” said head coach Terry Sydor. “They don’t give you a lot of time, and we struggled with that. Things that we’re successful with, against some teams it’s tougher. We’re young and we can be inconsistent.”
In the opening game of the series, Sydor was happy with his team’s compete level despite falling behind 3-0 after the first period.
“We had some real bad turnovers in the first period and a power play goal against,” he said. “We had a really good second period, with some great chances but we couldn’t get any goals.”
In game two Tyler Lisitza stopped 26 shots while the Slash fired 23 at Morgan Glover. Both teams scored twice on the power play — Edmonton on five chances and the Slash on six.
The Thunder went ahead halfway through the first on a power play tally from Liz Hillier, a point shot through traffic that Lisitza didn’t see.
But the Slash responded just over 30 seconds later, as Reithmayer converted a two-on-one with captain Melissa Kueber.
The Thunder struck again late in the period on the power play, with Jessica Sekulic one-timing a bullet through the five-hole.
Five minutes into the second, Taryn McCormick evened the game with a wraparound power play tally that visibly lifted the St. Albert bench.
The Slash pulled ahead at 8:12 on a point blast from Reithmayer with the man advantage.
But with just over two minutes left, Edmonton tied it on a beautiful tic-tac-toe play, starting with a drop pass and then a cross-crease feed to Rachel Johnson, who tapped it in.
“We took two penalties in the first and they scored twice but we did respond by going to the net and in the second we felt we won the period even though they scored late in the frame,” Sydor said.
The game turned in favour of the Thunder less than a minute into the third period. On the power play, the Slash got caught as the puck stuck in water in the defensive zone. Heather Kashman picked it up and deked with a backhand, roofing it blocker side past Lisitza.
“It was pretty devastating,” said Reithmayer. “It was our time to shine on the power play.”
“It sucked the energy right out of our team,” Sydor added. “We tried to keep it positive on the bench but we ran out of gas.”
The Thunder added an empty net goal for insurance.
Despite being on the brink of elimination, the Slash are confident they can still take the series. They lost all four games in the regular season to the Thunder but did beat the division leaders in the semifinals of the Mac’s tournament.
“We have to take away their time and space quickly and force them into mistakes [and] we haven’t done that in the first two games. We’re struggling with it, but if we can get them making mistakes, we can cash those in,” Reithmayer said.
If needed, game four is Saturday at 2:15 p.m. at Performance Arena and game five is Sunday at 6:45 p.m. at Callingwood Arena.
