It’s still early in the Alberta Junior Hockey League (AJHL) season, but Lloydminster Bobcats coach Eric Labrosse has already seen a disturbing trend with his new team.
Read more: Tournament time for U18 AAA Lancers
It wasn’t so much that the Bobcats lost two of their three road games in central and southern Alberta on the Sept. 26-28 weekend, but more the fact that a splintered showing Saturday followed a tidy Friday victory.
While he had little concern about Sunday afternoon’s 6-4 loss to the Canmore Eagles, Labrosse was most disappointed in Saturday’s 4-1 setback against the Calgary Canucks, especially coming after the Bobcats defeated the Drumheller Dragons 2-1 in a shootout Friday night.
“It was kind of like a copy-paste of what we’ve seen the other weekends, where our first game of the weekend is really good and our second game is just not that great,” Labrosse said. “It’s the opposite of what we see 24 hours previously.
“That’s something that we absolutely need to rectify. We (must) be able to be consistent every game. It all starts with our returning players. They have to lead the way. Some of them have been struggling since the start of the year, to show up and have an impact in games, so obviously that’s not helping us out right now. They’ve just got to be better, plain and simple.”
One week earlier, on season-opening weekend in Lloydminster, the Bobcats settled for a Cenovus Energy Hub split with the Fort McMurray Oil Barons, winning 4-2 before losing 4-0 the next night.
A few new faces — goaltender Matthew Kondro and forwards Tucker Robertson and Jadon Iyogun — were in the mix for Lloyd’s first road trip, which amounted to three games in two-and-a-half days. But the destinations were relatively close, and the Bobcats minimized their game-day travel Saturday when they made the trek to Calgary from Drumheller right after Friday’s game.
In the words of the Bobcats’ coach, however, “we didn’t show up” for the 5 p.m. Saturday contest in Ken Bracko Arena at Max Bell Centre.
“We were flat,” Labrosse said. “It looked like we had no energy. That game was a game to forget for everyone.”
MISSING PERSONNEL
It was a different story the next day as Lloyd performed respectably in Canmore, even with captain Kade Fendelet out of the lineup because of an injury and the newcomer Iyogun in the stands for undisclosed reasons.
The Bobcats had already lost the services of defenceman Quinn Keeler late in Friday’s game when he was hit from behind. He missed the rest of the weekend action and was projected to be out for at least a couple of weeks.
“Sunday, I thought we had the edge on Canmore,” Labrosse said. “We led them in shots quite a bit. They made a bit of a comeback in the second, but we still managed to keep the score in our favour.
“We were skating hard, applying pressure, finishing hits. We were kind of playing the same game we played against Drumheller, with the same energy and urgency in our game.
“Then, a 4-on-5 and a 3-on-5 (Bobcats’ disadvantage) midway through the third period, that just killed us, because we stayed in our own zone the whole time. We started losing energy at that point and (the Eagles) scored. For some reason, we kind of gassed out in the last nine to 10 minutes of the game. We played a really good 50 minutes, but we ended up losing the game in the last 10 minutes, which is unfortunate for how well the players played for the first 50.”
Jack Ferguson’s power-play tally early in the final period put the Bobcats ahead 4-2, but the Eagles responded with four straight goals, including Cohen Daoust’s empty-netter with 1:40 left.
Former Quebec major junior forward Raphael Messier assisted on all four Lloydminster goals, including a power-play marker from hometown defenceman Jaxan Hopko. Gus El-Tahhan and Matthew Hikida also scored for the Bobcats, as Ferguson and Esteban Cinq-Mars each recorded two-point games.
Lloydminster-born blueliner Brady Gamble, the former captain of the U18 AAA Lancers, picked up his second assist of the young season.
Kondro, who was on loan to the Bobcats from the WHL’s Red Deer Rebels for the weekend, made 25 saves in his second start in three days.
Lloyd fired 40 shots at Hudson Sedo, who posted his second win in as many games.
Aidan Tkachuk powered Canmore with two goals and two assists. Will Lutic, on a third-period power play, John Szabo and Bryson Insinger also scored for the Eagles in front of 400 fans at Canmore Recreation Centre. Along with his empty-net goal, Daoust added two assists.
In Saturday’s three-goal loss, the lone Lloyd marker came from Ethan Elefante, a 17-year-old rookie forward who scored his first AJHL goal in his home city, Calgary.
Another first-year junior, Sam Madgett, made 23 saves for the Bobcats, who registered 35 shots against overager Noah Nelson.
The Canucks’ Harper LoLacher scored two goals, including an empty-netter. Grant Reid and Connor Radke, on the power play, had given Calgary an early 2-0 lead before Elefante responded eight minutes into the game. Radke had just joined the Canucks from the WHL’s Kamloops Blazers.
NEWCOMER FACES OLD TEAM
Friday’s game in Drumheller pitted Kondro against his former team. The Dragons traded his junior A rights to Lloydminster on Aug. 20 in the deal that brought forward Wyatt Yule to Drumheller. Yule was in the Dragons’ lineup Friday and was one of the nine players who didn’t score in the six-round shootout.
Robertson, a recent recruit from Okanagan Hockey Academy, scored the shootout winner in his Lloyd debut. The Bobcats’ Alessio Nardelli and and the Dragons’ Bradley Gallo each found the back of the net early in the shootout.
Fendelet and Gallo exchanged first-period goals for the only offence in regulation and overtime.
Lloydminster outshot Drumheller 26-23, including a 14-3 margin in the third period. The Dragons had a 4-0 edge in overtime shots.
Manning their respective nets were Kondro for Lloyd and Sean Cootes for Drumheller.
“I thought we played really hard in Drum,” Labrosse reported. “We really came out of the gate, and we stuck with them. They’re a really good-skating team. They play heavy, so I thought we were able to match that.
“In the second period, they maybe edged us out a bit, and our goalie that night, Matthew Kondro, had to keep us in on a few plays, which he did. He was able to keep us in the game when much needed.
“We came back hard in the third period, and we probably had a few more chances than they did. We kind of traded chances second and third periods, and then ultimately it could have gone either way in OT or a shootout, and we ended up on top of it, which was great for us.”
Overall, Labrosse described it as a solid effort in Lloyd’s first road game.
“All the players were engaged in the game, they were all physical (and) they each had their part in it,” he said. “That was positive.”
The letdown on the night after a win is something Labrosse and company have witnessed as far back as the exhibition schedule. It also explains the Bobcats’ ordinary 2-3 start in the regular season.
“That’s who we are,” the coach said frankly. “We’ve done it the past three weekends, where we’re good one night and we’re very average or sub-par the next night. I think we deserve where we are in the standings right now, because we haven’t shown any consistency from game to game.
“Could we be better? Yes. We do have the pieces to be better.”
The Bobcats are back on home ice this Saturday (Oct. 4) against the Olds Grizzlys and next Wednesday (Oct. 8) versus the Devon Xtreme. Both games are 7 p.m. starts.
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