The senior B Miners won their last regular season home game against Spruce Grove Saturday night. Head coach Vay Diep said that despite Spruce Grove being last place in the standings, he didn’t expect an 11-5 final score, especially with a short St. Albert bench.
“Scoreboard-wise, I thought they would compete a little bit more against us,” Diep said. “If I was them and I saw the game sheet and seen that I was down three men, I would press a little bit more. So I was a little surprised by that, for sure.”
The Miners were a few players short, including Chris Schmidt and David Ahl, but the Cornfield combo of brothers Jordan and Graedon were back in the line-up Saturday night. In his first game back after taking some time off, Graedon lead the scoring for the Miners with four goals. Captain Nate Schmidt put three in the net for St. Albert and Josh Sullivan had two.
The energetic Miners squad was getting to the net in the first period, but had a hard time solving the Slash goalie and the period finished with a 2-1 score for St. Albert.
Edmonton Rush goalie Aaron Bold was in net for Spruce Grove.
“With him, since he’s so good, we’ve got to really mix up our shots,” assistant captain Graedon Cornfield said. “So we always had to take different shots, shots that we normally wouldn’t feel comfortable taking and that we normally don’t do Kind of step out of our comfort zone to get those shots in. So we started doing that, kind of mixing it up, and tried to keep him guessing.”
The strategy worked as St. Albert put six balls past Bold in the second including Graedon Cornfield’s shorthander a minute into the period.
“We were focusing today on getting inside their defence, getting in close to the net and getting those quality chances,” Cornfield said. “And I think by moving our feet and moving the ball, we really accomplished that tonight.”
At the beginning of the season, Diep said he wanted the team to play a faster game and run more. The Miners were quick on the floor against the Slash this weekend, in the second period especially, and their speed paid off for the team. The score was 8-1 heading into the third.
“Like I told the boys today, we played the best second period we’ve had – six goals and I don’t know how many transition chances we had – so they’re getting it,” Diep said. “That’s the pace I would like to play all the time, for sure.”
Assistant captain Cornfield said keeping up the pace will be important for the team during the playoffs.
“We’ve got to keep our pace up for 60 minutes,” he said. “We have a lot of young guys on our team with good legs, good endurance, so we’ve got to really push the ball from defence to transition to offence. So as long as we stretch the floor, run fast and get those guys moving up the floor quickly and get those shots on net, we’ll be good.”
The No. 2-ranked Miners (9-4) already have a spot in the playoff run and Diep anticipates they will face the third-ranked Calgary Mounties (8-5) in a challenging first round.
“They’re a pretty scary team,” Diep said. “They’re built like us – how we were built three years ago – with young draft picks and with a core that they have kept in the last three years. They have a very good coach in John Kilbride, so it’s not going to be easy, it’ll be tough.”
The Miners play their final regular season game against the Edmonton Outlaws at Bill Hunter Arena tonight at 8 p.m.
