The St. Albert Raiders are struggling to perform at the same high level they did at the Mac’s tournament during the Christmas break.
The midget AAA team is a lukewarm 1-2-2 in league play after going 5-1 as semifinalists at the Mac’s.
“For all the years I’ve been in this league it seems like the teams that have a little bit of success at the Mac’s always come back to league play and are a little flat,” said head coach Sandro Pisani.
The 18-8-4 Raiders are entrenched in second place in the north division despite the team’s losing record in January.
“To be honest our play hasn’t been as good as before,” Pisani said. “When you come back from that tournament and you’ve been on such a high and you’re so intense your game isn’t quite where it needs to be. You forget that when you get back there are a lot of teams that are really battling to get into the playoffs and jockeying for position. We’ve been kind of a little complacent as to where we are in the standings and our game hasn’t been at that level but I believe we’re slowly starting to get back to where we need to be.”
The Raiders have four games remaining to get their act together before the playoffs start. Pisani said the biggest area of concern is the power play.
“We scored some timely goals this weekend but we had some opportunities to maybe solidify the game on the power play and we didn’t capitalize so that is something we’re going to address in the next couple of weeks.”
Saturday in Fort Saskatchewan the Raiders and Rangers (9-15-5) played to a 4-4 draw.
“We were a little slow to start the game. They’re a team battling for a playoff berth and they showed a little more desperation and a little more intensity early on in the game,” Pisani said. “As the game went on we got better. We were down going into the third and we did a good job of rallying and coming back to tie that game.”
Sunday at Akinsdale Arena the Raiders settled for a 3-3 tie with the Sherwood Park Kings (12-10-7). Down 2-1 in the third period the Raiders scored twice in the first 10 minutes before the Kings countered with the equalizer.
“Overall it was a good effort. We were short some bodies so we were down to a pretty thin line-up but the guys battled hard,” Pisani said. “We were happy with game but we felt our power play needed to score and that is something we will focus on definitely over the next few weeks.”
Injuries to Josh Jewell, Luc Lalor and twins Mitch and Liam McNamara left the Raiders short-staffed at forward.
“We’re battling a bit of an injury bug so hopefully that is going to be out of our system soon. We’ve got a couple of weeks off now so hopefully we’ll be healthy by the time we play our next game,” Pisani said.
The Raiders resume play Feb. 11 against the South Side Athletics Club (13-12-4) at 2:45 p.m. at Bill Hunter Arena.
