Facing a couple of their contemporaries in the AJHL’s North Division, the Lloydminster Bobcats batted .500 last weekend as they won and lost back-to-back home games to kick off 2026.
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The Bobcats’ three-game winning streak ended Sunday afternoon at the Hub with a 4-2 loss to the league-leading Whitecourt Wolverines.
Lloydminster opened its post-Christmas schedule on Saturday night with a 5-4 victory over the Grande Prairie Storm.
After the weekend, the third-place Bobcats (18-10-3) were eight points behind Whitecourt (23-9-1) and five back of the No. 2 Fort McMurray Oil Barons (19-9-6). Lloyd was two points ahead of Grande Prairie (18-13-1) and five in front of the Bonnyville Pontiacs (16-13-2).
The Pontiacs and Bobcats meet each other three times in six days, beginning this Friday (Jan. 9) in Bonnyville and continuing at the Hub in Lloydminster on Saturday (Jan. 10) and Wednesday (Jan. 14).
The abundance of divisional action raises the stakes that much more, as evidenced last weekend in Lloyd in front of 1,000-plus crowds on consecutive days.
“You play a good team, you give them a few chances, and they’ll put it in, which is what they did,” Lloyd coach Eric Labrosse said after Sunday’s loss to Whitecourt. “We just have to be better. Overall, we played 120 minutes of hockey (on the weekend) and we probably only played a good 60 out of 120. So, that’s on us to be better and to be ready next time. We’ve got to win games against division opponents here.”
The Wolverines have set the standard in the North Division — and the entire AJHL — this season. The Bobcats own a 3-2 record against the league-leaders but couldn’t narrow the standings gap at home Sunday.
“Today, it was a huge game against Whitecourt to try to get closer to them in the standings,” Labrosse said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t show up like we should have. We were lacking a lot of grit. We were lacking a will to win puck battles and to be hard physically, which was part of the game plan, and we didn’t apply it as we should have.
“That was the big key to us losing the game, is we didn’t win most of our one-on-one battles. (We had) a better third period, but too little, too late. Even though we outshot them quite a bit in the third, not too many of those shots were actual scoring chances. We’ve just got to learn from that. Against the better teams, you can’t not be defending hard in your D zone and hope to win games, because two of the goals they scored, it was us puck-watching in our D zone, not defending hard, not picking up sticks, not cutting passing lanes away from them.”
PRATT PROLIFIC
Elliott Pratt, an NCAA Division 1 commit of Robert Morris University, made 49 saves as Lloydminster outshot Whitecourt 51-25, including a 28-5 margin in the scoreless third period. Ty Matonovich, with his first loss in three starts, tended goal for the Bobcats.
Whitecourt never trailed Sunday, leading 2-0 after the first period and gaining 3-1 and 4-2 advantages in the second.
Jager Gugyelka, on the power play, scored the eventual winning goal as part of his two-point game. Alex Symes, Brendan Ruskowski and Ty Rayan had the Wolverines’ other goals. Tristan Slywka and newcomer Xander Schulte each added two assists. It was Schulte’s second game with Whitecourt since the Jan. 1 trade that brought the rugged forward, along with goaltender Preston Lewis, to the Wolverines and sent forward Wyatt Ball, netminder Luke McKechnie and future considerations to the Devon Xtreme.
Jadon Iyogun, with his team-leading 14th goal of the season, and Gus El-Tahhan, with his 10th, were the Lloydminster scorers.
EL-TAHHAN HOT
El-Tahhan tallied three points, including two goals, in the Bobcats’ Saturday win over the Storm. He and defencemen Jaxan Hopko and Dylan Deets each scored power-play markers. Hopko and Kael Screpnek each supplied a goal and an assist. One of the assists on Screpnek’s goal — just 54 seconds into the game — went to new defenceman Tafari Chingwaru, with his first point in his third game as a Bobcat.
Matthew Lesyk, with two points, Max Leduc, Treysen Miller and Zachary Wilson scored for Grande Prairie, which netted three straight goals in the second period to erase a 3-1 deficit and take a 4-3 lead into the final frame. Deets pulled the Bobcats even two minutes into the third and El-Tahhan potted the winner with 3:20 left.
Jaiden Sharma, with 29 saves, registered his first victory in four games since joining the Bobcats in early December. Hudson Perry stopped 30 shots between the Storm pipes.
It was an up-and-down game in front of the 1,309 Hub fans who welcomed the return of the Bobcats — and junior A hockey — after the holidays.
“Saturday’s game was like a roller-coaster of a game, where we came out strong, then we completely disappeared in the second period,” said coach Labrosse. “Then, we came back strong again in the third to show character and resiliency and take the game back that we had kind of given up in the second period.
“Our special units kept us out of trouble. I think we went 75 per cent on the power play and 100 on the PK. So, special units did it for us, in a sense.
“We came out hard in the first period, (but) we had to make a comeback in the third period. We let the game slip away from us in the second, not being hard at all defensively and let them basically skate up and down the ice with way too much ease. But, overall, glad we were able to pull it off and didn’t throw in the towel when the game got away from us in the second.”
HYNES ON THE BOARD
The Bobcats went into the holiday break on a high after posting a 6-1 victory over Whitecourt on Dec. 19 and a 2-1 win over the Drayton Valley Thunder on Dec. 20. Both games were played in Lloydminster.
Bobcats’ 17-year-old rookie forward Ty Hynes scored his first AJHL goal, in his 12th career game, to open the offence against Drayton Valley.
CHADI TO THE WHL
In the loss to Lloyd last Saturday, Grande Prairie was without one of its top young players in 17-year-old defenceman Noah Chadi, an Edmonton native. Chadi was called up to the major junior Red Deer Rebels last week and scored his first WHL goal Saturday in Red Deer’s 5-3 victory over the visiting Seattle Thunderbirds.
Early this week, the Storm and the Rebels announced that Chadi would remain with Red Deer for the rest of the WHL season.
Chadi was a late addition to the Team Canada West roster for the World Junior A Challenge last month. He scored West’s lone goal in a 5-1 loss to the U.S. in the final.
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