The St. Albert Merchants can see light at the end of the tunnel after a dark stretch in the Capital Junior B Hockey League.
Points in six out of seven games while going 3-1-3 in November has the Merchants looking forward to the remainder of the season.
“We’re trying to get back to having fun playing hockey rather than being so worried about what’s going on. Having fun is usually a good sign of playing pretty good hockey,” said captain Andy Barr.
The Merchants (7-10-3, 77 GF/82 GA) are slowly climbing out of a deep hole in the west standings after losing six out of seven games in regulation time that left the Money Men buried in the sixth and last playoff spot.
“It’s been a little bit of perseverance,” said Barr, a third-year Merchant. “We were having a bit of trouble right after the start (of the season) for sure, but we’ve all kind of decided that we really needed to buckle down. There has been some attitude change in the room and we’re more focused on the upswing rather than the downswing. We’re really trying to focus on the good parts of the game rather than the bad parts right now because we’re trying to weed out a bit of the negativity.”
The Merchants are “reforming as a team right now” with a new head coach in Zach Rodda and 13 returnees when the puck dropped for the team’s 35th anniversary season.
“We’re kind of reshaping compared to last year. We’ve had a lot of new guys come in so it’s been a learning process. There have been ups and downs but we’re definitely trying to figure ourselves out here. We’ve faced our adversity and we’re battling through it as best as we can,” Barr said. “There are always good nights and bad nights but it’s fun overall.”
Case in point was Friday’s 6-5 victory over the Edmonton Mustangs at Akinsdale Arena.
“That was a really fun game to play,” Barr said of the Merchants giving up three goals in the opening 13:51 minutes and trailing 4-3 when the first period ended.
“You’re always going to face that especially in a league like junior B that we have here. People can score like nothing and a lot of games are going to be high scoring so we kind of know that in a league like this anything can happen,” Barr added. “We went down three and we took a timeout and we just said, ‘Hey guys, we know that this isn’t anything of a stretch to be able to come back from this so we’ve just kept going.’
“We got our first one in there and we definitely saw the momentum swing.”
Cole Gupta kick-started the comeback at the 15-minute mark and Sam Milner pumped in a pair before the Mustangs closed out the period with five seconds left.
In the middle frame, Ryan Cooper’s goal pulled the Merchants even at four and six minutes later the Mustangs regained the lead on the power play.
In the third, Bryce Sturm tallied twice in the third as the Merchants posted their second win in a row and third in four games.
Kole Bryks, Justin MacDonald and Jack Langenhahn chipped in with two assists apiece.
Shots were 22-20 for the Mustangs in the first, 20-6 for the Merchants in the second and 16-13 for the visitors in the third.
Brandon Boughen (31 saves) replaced Colton Iwaschuk (13 saves) with the Merchants down 3-0.
“Once we potted our first one we were all looking up from there,” said Barr of beating the Mustangs (10-10-1), tied for third in the west.
However, Sunday’s 8-2 drubbing by the Beverly Warriors (16-6), co-leaders in the west with the North Edmonton Red Wings (15-3-2), was “pretty tough” with a short lineup against the CJHL playoff finalists and provincial bronze medallists.
“They’re an incredible team. They’re really hard to play against and that’s a pretty big compliment for a team,” said Barr, a centre who switched to defence to assist a depleted blueline.
Beverly potted three goals before the game was six minutes old and led 4-1 after the first at Clareview Arena.
Four consecutive markers in the second was triggered by a power-play marker with 1:26 gone in the period.
Gupta and Sturm replied against the team that swept the Merchants in the best-of-five quarter-final series.
Sturm leads the Merchants in scoring with 17 goals and 28 points.
Shots were 40-19 as Iwaschuk (4-4, 3.61 GAA) stopped 11 of 15 over 15 minutes and Boughen (3-9, 4.28 GAA) handled 21 of 25 over 45 minutes.
“Not really sure how to sum up that one,” Barr said. “It was just a game where those nights will happen.”
Meanwhile, the process continues as the Merchants try not to “complicate things too much” while reducing turnovers and generating quality scoring chances.
“One thing we’ve really been focusing on a lot especially in practice lately is trying to weed out making fancy plays,” Barr said. “We’ve been working on playing a simple dump-and-chase kind of game, just chipping it past the D man in our zones so we can get a little bit of an offensive attack off of it more consistently.”
Barr, 20, a former midget AA St. Albert Crusader, has one goal and nine points in 20 games after generating eight goals and 17 points in 33 games last season. His wingers the last few games were Gupta, a rookie, and veteran Marco Runco.
The Merchants have five games left until the Christmas break to close the gap on the fifth-place Stony Plain Flyers (10-11).
“We’ll make sure we’re focusing on getting these last few points before the break so we can go in with a little more confidence and hopefully move up a couple of spots, too,” said Barr, who played high school football as a safety for the Bellerose Bulldogs. “You always want to go into a break excited and feeling like you’re ready to play some good hockey when you get back and even if we don’t go into the break with that kind of thing we’ll take the break as a way to see if we can do some team building. We’ll be hanging out over the break and make sure we spend some time together and then I think that will translate onto the ice pretty well.”
Sunday the Merchants host the Leduc Riggers (10-10-1) at 8 p.m.
Rivalry game
The Merchants also tangle with the Morinville Jets (10-8-1) next Friday at 8 p.m. in St. Albert.The Jets won the previous rivalry games 6-3 Sept. 28 in St. Albert and 6-2 Nov. 17 in Morinville.
The eighth victory in nine games for the Jets was 4-1 over Leduc on Sunday in Morinville.
Brett Dubuc’s four-point performance included a natural hat-trick after assisting on the opening goal by Jaron Coles.
Dubuc leads the CJHL in goals with 23 and is the co-leader in points with 42 in 19 games.
Colton Kuchar (6-6, 3.26 GAA) faced a game-high 33 shots.
The first loss after seven wins was last week’s 7-0 shutout by Beverly at Clareview Arena.
Friday the Jets visit the Flyers at 8:30 p.m. at Glenn Hall Centennial Arena and Sunday’s game time against the Spruce Grove Regals (4-19) is 7:30 p.m. in Morinville.
ICE CHIPS: The moustache-wearing Merchants raised $6,152 during Movember and the total featured $5,662 through donations to the team’s website and $390 from Friday’s 50/50, which included the $200 sponsorship by Aveng, a unisex clothing business. The 50/50 winner also contributed money to the cause.
