The St. Albert Steel will see what they are made of against the best of the best in the Alberta Junior Hockey League over the next two weeks.
Prior to the Christmas break, the last-place Steel have home-and-away games against the AJHL champion Spruce Grove Saints before playing the Fort McMurray Oil Barons three times in a row.
The Saints and Oil Barons are the top two teams in the AJHL and are ranked second and fifth, respectively, in the Canadian Junior Hockey League.
The Steel were 6-28-2 after their 11th loss in 12 games, 5-2 to the Lloydminster Bobcats in front of a season-low 116 fans Wednesday at Performance Arena.
Friday the Steel hosted the Saints (26-2-6), but the score as unavailable at press time.
“We’ve just got to battle through it and keep playing our hearts out. We have to keep coming to the rink ready to work,” said centre Bryce Sauers.
Facing an uphill battle to make the playoffs, the Steel dealt several prominent 20-year-olds last week for younger players, prospects and future considerations.
The AJHL’s weakest defensive team also added netminder Tanner Kovacs, 17, on loan from the Lethbridge Hurricanes of the Western Hockey League. To make room for the former midget AAA St. Albert Raider, the Steel shipped Ty Swabb, 19, to the Prince George Kings of the British Columbia Junior Hockey League.
Only five players remain from the 2010-11 Steel team that finished seventh at 26-31-3.
“We’ve got a whole new team here now,” Sauers said. “We’re just trying to start a new thing here and get all the boys going.”
The Steel were 1-5 since their captain (Taylor Fraser), best player (Reed Linaker), leading scorer (John Baird) and top defenceman (Jordan Abt) were traded away.
“We’re getting there. It’s not too bad. We’ve just got to get the boys focused and come to the rink ready to play,” Sauers said.
Wednesday the Steel were looking good after Sauers struck on the power play at 6:57 in the second to put them up 2-1. But they let it slip away. The Bobcats (22-7-3) tied it six minutes later, then pulled away in the third with two goals by Kyle Harris and Jake Matkin’s empty netter. Harris scored the winner at 13:40 with a shot on the short side over the shoulder of Rhys Hadfield. His insurance marker with 2:45 remaining was a quick release from the slot that beat Hadfield upstairs.
“It was just tough breaks. There were little breakdowns in our defensive end, we got caught flat footed and they got open and scored,” Sauers said.
Steel defenceman Taylor Graham recorded his first goal since joining the team last week from the Brooks Bandits to make it 1-1 late in the first.
Sauer’s go-ahead marker was the fourth goal and 13th point for the Steel’s game star. The second-year Steel forward from Fort Saskatchewan also wore the captain’s crest as the team rotates the C among a core of players.
Hadfield (3-15, 4.55 GAA), the only 20-year-old on the Steel roster, faced 36 shots. The Steel were credited with 20 shots against Emerence Maschmeyer (2-2-1, 4.13 GAA), a 17-year-old netminder from Bruderheim who’s also with the U18 national women’s team.
The loss was the Steel’s fourth in a row.
“The boys were confident going in, we just came up short,” Sauers said.
The night before in Drayton Valley the Steel were outshot 18-2 in the first and 53-20 overall in the 5-1 loss to the Thunder (16-14-4).
“We put in a way better effort (versus Lloydminster) than in Drayton. The boys were using each other more as a team and we moved the puck well,” Sauers said.
It was 4-0 for the Thunder when Jamie Johnson capitalized on the power play at 8:50 in the third for his sixth goal and team-leading 25th point in 33 games.
Kovacs is winless in two starts with the Steel after getting fed a steady diet of pucks by the Thunder.
The next game for the Steel is Wednesday in Spruce Grove at 7 p.m.
They play twice next weekend in Fort McMurray before hosting the Oil Barons (27-3-3) on Dec. 21 at 7 p.m.
ICE CHIPS: After acquitting Brendan Santini from Brooks as part of the Linaker deal, the Steel sent the 18-year-old forward from Calgary to the Trail Smoke Eaters of the BCHL for future considerations. Santini spent last season in the WHL with the Calgary Hitmen and this season in the AJHL he had six goals and 12 assists in 26 games with the Calgary Canucks. Santini and Graham, 18, were traded by the Canucks to Brooks before the south division leaders sent both players, plus future considerations, to the Steel for Linaker.
