The comeback was too little, too late for the junior A St. Albert Miners Wednesday night and it cost them dearly.
Down 8-5 in the third period to the Edmonton Eclipse, the Miners pulled to within one but despite several close calls, couldn’t find the equalizer, losing 8-7 at Performance Arena.
With the loss, the Miners finish in fourth place in the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse League’s junior A division, earning a date with the top-ranked Okotoks Raiders in the playoffs. Had St. Albert won, they would have leapfrogged the Eclipse into second place, earning home floor advantage in a playoff rematch.
Head coach A.J. Jomha said he knew it was a golden opportunity that slipped away.
“It’s frustrating, but it’s probably more disappointing,” he said. “I think we let ourselves down. We had a lot of opportunities that we could have put this game away and didn’t do that. We had other opportunities to close the gap and we didn’t do it. At the end, we had a chance to tie it up and we didn’t do it.”
Even a tie would have put the Miners in third, giving them an easier match-up in the first round against the Eclipse. And with the Raiders hosting the Minto Cup national junior A championship this year, it might have meant an easier road to the tournament.
“If you’re in the second-third series, if you win that [series] and the Raiders win, you’re automatically going through,” he said. “Now we’ve got to beat the Raiders and beat the winner of the other series. It’ll be a tough series.”
After getting out to a 4-3 lead in the first period, the second period was the Miners’ undoing, as they failed to score any goals in the frame while the Eclipse scored three to go ahead 6-4.
“We stopped moving our feet,” Jomha said. “On offence, we started to ball-watch on the off-side of the ball. When [the Eclipse] are allowed to play help defence like they like to play, they are going to have success.”
But were it not for goalie Scott Kavalinas making some big saves in the period, it could have been worse.
“I think there’s strong goaltending throughout the league and Scott’s right up there with all of them,” Jomha said.
St. Albert was down 8-5 with 5:48 left in the third, but a shot from the right side by Nils Thompson found its way into the net to narrow the gap. Thirty seconds later, Miners’ faceoff specialist Jordan Wolfe was awarded a penalty shot after being hauled down on a breakaway by an Eclipse defender.
Wolfe took full advantage of the opportunity, going wide to the left before cutting back in and sneaking a shot through Eclipse goalie Michael Cunningham’s legs, bringing the Miners to within one.
Wolfe said the move was half practice and half improvisation.
“We practice shootouts every practice,” he said.
The Miners had plenty of chances in the last few minutes of the game, winning loose balls and creating turnovers, but could not find the twine. Richard Thompson rang one off the goal post with 1:08 left and Cunningham shut the door the rest of the way.
“It’s pretty upsetting; we didn’t get a win on them all year,” Wolfe said.
As frustrated as Jomha and the players were with the result, the coach said the focus must now shift to the Raiders, who he felt they could give a run for their money, even though they lost only two games all season.
“They’re a run-and-gun team like we are,” said Jomha, whose Miners were outscored 46-25 by the Raiders in four games this season. “We need to work on their transition; they transition the ball well, so we’ll need to focus on that.”
“We’ll keep practicing hard, maybe watch some game film,” Wolfe added.
“I think we match up well. There’s been a couple of close games.”
The Miners open their series in Okotoks this weekend with two games at Centennial Arena, today at 5 p.m. and tomorrow at 4 p.m.
