A winning season is starting to slip away from the slumping St. Albert Steel.
Losers of six of their last seven games, the Steel (23-21-2) are mired in the seventh and last playoff spot in the north division.
“We’ve had a decent year so far but right now we’re going through a rough stretch,” forward Spencer Pommells told the Gazette at the Steel-sponsored pond hockey game Monday night at Lacombe Lake. “We’re definitely working towards getting out of this little rut that we’re in. We’ve just got to make sure we work hard and not become complacent with the rut that we are in.”
It’s been a tough month for the Steel, with three wins and seven losses while going 1-7 on the road.
“You can’t have over half a year the way we’ve had and then all of a sudden it just goes away like it has in the last little while so it’s only a matter of time before we get out of it,” Pommells said. “We have played well at home [14-8-1] but we haven’t done well on the road [9-13-1] so that’s something that we have to work on.”
Team morale is still high despite the downward spiral that started with a 3-4-2 showing in December.
“Sometimes it’s tough to keep it positive when things aren’t going the way you want it to be going but I think we’ve had success with keeping it positive,” Pommells said. “Once our offence gets back to putting the puck into the net, and we play some more tight defence, we’re going to start winning games again.”
It also looks like the Steel have played their way out of a possible fourth-place finish, and home-ice advantage in the best-of-five opening round. They trail the Grande Prairie Storm (29-17-4) by 14 points with four games in hand.
“Home ice would be huge but it doesn’t make or break our season,” Pommells said. “There is so much parity in the league that when you play anywhere on any given night you have an opportunity to win. We’ve only had about a two week slump and it shows how quickly things can turn in the division that we’re [still] in with everybody so successful.”
The Steel have 14 games remaining, of which seven are at home, to turn their season around before the playoffs start.
“We want to get up there in the standings and if the other teams that are ahead of us go on a hot streak and we’re not able to catch them that’s not a big problem for us either,” Pommells said. “We’re going to be OK, we just have to get back to where we need to be.”
This weekend the Steel host the second-place Fort McMurray Oil Barons (36-12-1) Friday (tickets are $5) and Saturday at 7 p.m. at Performance Arena. They are a potential first-round opponent for the Steel. Last year in the playoffs the Oil Barons swept the Steel in three games. This season the Steel are 1-2-1 against the Gord Thibodeau-coached Oil Barons.
“We’re definitely looking forward to it. We’ve got to have two solid games at home. We haven’t played much at home this month. We’ve only played two and won both of them [5-4 against Grande Prairie in overtime Jan. 3 and 6-4 against the Lloydminster Bobcats last Wednesday] so we want to keep that going against a team like Fort Mac, who could end up being a first-round opponent against us,” Pommells said.
“We want to make sure we come out with the same intensity we did against Spruce Grove on Saturday night.”
In the 6-2 loss to the Spruce Grove Saints (40-4-4) in Stony Plain, Taylor Fraser’s second goal of the game, and team-leading 26th, closed the gap to 4-2 with 2:29 left in period two.
It was 2-0 for the reigning Alberta Junior Hockey League champions, when Fraser potted his 11th power play goal at 11:57 in the second.
Shots overall were 42-30 for the number-one ranked team in the Canadian Junior Hockey League. Steel backup Chris Sharkey (0-4, 4.98 GAA) made a rare start in net.
“It wasn’t a 6-2 game. In the third period we outshot them [15-13] and we were in their end for most of it but when you don’t bury your chances against a team like Spruce Grove you’re not going to come out with two points,” said Pommells, who assisted on both Steel goals.
The Steel’s performance was night and day compared to Friday’s humbling 4-0 loss in Sherwood Park against the sixth-place Crusaders (22-18-6). The Steel tested goalie Patrick Terriss with only three shots in the first period and were outshot 31-19 overall. Rhys Hadfield (23-17-2, 3.63 GAA) was tagged with the loss.
“The Friday night game is one that we needed to put behind us. That was just one of those games where I don’t think we were mentally into it. We just came out not prepared,” said Pommells, 20, the Steel’s fourth-leading scorer with 47 points in 46 games. “It’s never good to get a couple of losses in a row like that but we played a lot better Saturday night. I was very impressed with the way the guys bounced back. Now we’ve got to make sure we keep that effort for the rest of the year.”
ICE CHIPS: Steel captain Mike Giese, 20, played in his 200th AJHL game, all with the Steel, Friday against the Crusaders.
All-star centre Reed Linaker has been sidelined the last five games with a lower body injury. He is third in team scoring with 49 points in 32 games. Fraser is the top point producer with 52 in 46 games.
Tickets are $10 for the Sell Out For The Stollery game between the Steel and last-place Drayton Valley Thunder (8-37-6) Feb. 4 at 7 p.m. at Performance. The Steel will also auction of team jerseys. Fifty per cent of the night’s proceeds will benefit the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation.
