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AAA Stars collapse vs. Blackhawks, fall in OT

Nov 17, 2016 | 9:06 PM

The AAA Stars had the game in their hands on Thursday night at home and let it slip away.

Late in the game, they held a 5-3 lead over the Beardy’s Blackhawks and appeared set to snap a four-game slide. But the Blackhawks scored a pair of goals in the final two minutes and then again in extra time to win the game 6-5 in overtime thanks to a goal from Jaxon White.

“We’ve got to be willing to stick to the game plan for 60 minutes and not vary from it if we get up by a couple,” Stars head coach Jean Fauchon said after the loss, the team’s fifth in a row. “[We need to] do the little things, like getting pucks deep. We had a couple of turnovers at our blue-line that resulted in odd man rushes or breakaways and they put them in the net. They buried them. We can’t have that. Pucks have got to get deep.”

The third period was absolutely dominated by the visitors, who outshot the Stars 29-8 and scored three unanswered goals. The game-tying goal was scored with just 3.6 seconds left on the clock by Billy Trarback.

“I though it was really an old fashioned shootout because they had a lot of scoring chances too, especially in overtime,” Blackhawks head coach Dale Grayston. “We’ve been kind of going all year this way – struggling to put the puck in the net – and it looked like it was going to happen again when they went up 5-1 and then just somehow we were able to generate shots to the net and find a way.”

Despite giving up a late lead and getting significantly outplayed in the third, there were definitely some positives for the AAA Stars.

Most obviously, they scored five goals, something that hadn’t been done yet through the first 15 games.

Ian Hillis led the way for the Stars with two goals, while Dayton Buchanan, Jordan Mish, and Luke Reid also chipped in with a goal each.

“I thought we moved the puck well for the first half of the game,” Fauchon said. “We had some guys who stepped up and were scoring some goals who didn’t have a lot of points this year. We worked hard. We were taking the body; we were physical. For the first 40, 45 minutes, I thought we played very well.”

The Stars came out strong, taking a 2-0 lead into the first intermission. In the second, the Blackhawks cut the lead in half before the Stars exploded for three goals in a span of 2:26 to take a commanding 5-1 lead. Those three quick goals came from Hillis, Mish and Buchanan.

But the only thing the Stars will liklely remember is their third period collapse, which pushes their losing streak to five games and their season record to 5-10-0-1.

Fauchon thinks is something the team can learn from moving forward.

“For sure were going to learn from [the mistakes] but we’ve got to learn quickly,” he said. “If you look at it, we were up by two and then the goal they scored to get within one was, again, us with the puck at the blue line and we didn’t get it deep. It’s a little thing. You get it deep and we’re hemming them in their zone and they have to come 200 feet instead of a turnover with a breakaway.”

The Stars will travel to Swift Current on Saturday and then host the Notre Dame Hounds on Sunday afternoon at the Civic Centre.

 

Nathan Kanter is battlefordsNOW’s sports reporter and voice of the Battlefords North Stars. He can be reached at Nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca or tweet him @NathanKanter11