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North Stars winning streak ends after Bruins offence explodes

Nov 20, 2016 | 8:09 AM

Their winning streak is over.

Coming into Saturday’s game against the second place Estevan Bruins, the North Stars knew it wouldn’t be easy to push their winning streak to 14 games. But nobody expected they would lose in the fashion they did: an 8-6 loss in front of their home fans.

 “It’s easy to pinpoint where we went wrong. We have eight examples of it plus more,” head coach Nate Bedford said after the loss, just the team’s sixth of the season through 27 games. “I think [the Bruins] probably had somewhere around 15 to 18 scoring chances by my count and against a good team that can score goals, you’re not going to win.”

Coming into the game, the Bruins had put up back-to-back seven goal games, first against Humboldt on Thursday and then against Kindersley on Friday, winning both.

But the North Stars also had a league low 1.96 goals-per-game coming into Saturday’s action and had handily defeated the Bruins 10-3 on Oct. 15. They’d only given up more than four goals once this season before Saturday.

So how exactly did their loss come to be?

“We tried to play a run-and-gun game against a team that’s a run-and-gun team and we should have played our game instead of playing theirs,” Bedford said. “We got caught up in the power play, penalty kill game a little bit and I think our power play was real good. Unfortunately, so was theirs.”

Much of the night was spent on special teams, as both clubs exchanged pleasantries early and often, combining for 48 penalty minutes in the opening period alone.

In the end, 80 penalty minutes were split between the teams, with the North Stars getting 10 opportunities on the power play and Estevan receiving nine.

Both were lethal: the North Stars scored four power play goals and the Bruins landed three.

“Our offence will always be there,” Bedford said. “Teams will get frustrated with our defence and eventually we’ll get opportunities but when we start looking for offensive opportunities, we lose defence right away.”

The other big storyline of the night was the North Stars giving up their leads. They were ahead by two goals at three different times but couldn’t stop a Bruins comeback each time.

Estevan not only kept clawing their way back, but they kept doing so in quick succession.

Their first couple of goals to tie it 2-2 were scored just 1:17 apart. Then Jake Fletcher’s two goals to tie it 4-4 were scored just 40 seconds apart. And finally, the three goals to put them in a 7-6 lead came within a 1:46 span late in the third.

“You don’t come back from three separate two-goal deficits without having some courage,” Bruins head coach Chris Lewgood said after the win. “For me the biggest difference was…we were able to execute.”

Fletcher and rookie Michael McChesney were able to execute when it mattered most, as Fletcher scored three consecutive Bruins’ goals, while McChesney got the goal to tie it at six.

McChesney then fed a pass out to defenceman Josh Rieger for the game-winning seventh goal, before sealing the deal with an empty netter for the 8-6 win.

Despite allowing seven goals, North Stars goaltender Joel Gryzbowski’s goals-against-average is still tops in the league at 1.84. His save percentage fell to third in the SJHL from .945 to .930, however.

“He’s a confident kid. He believes in himself just like we all do,” Bedford said when asked how Gryzbowski would bounce back. “I’m sure by the time practice is over Monday, he’ll be back to himself. It’s never easy letting in seven goals but at the same time we left him out to dry and they’re not all his fault.”

The next game for the North Stars is Wednesday in Humboldt against the Broncos, who have dropped three straight.

Bedford said how his team reacts to the loss is more important than the loss itself. It might even be easier to get back on track because of how Saturday’s loss happened.

“I think it’s a much easier pill to swallow, I think – after winning 13 straight – to do it with not playing our style at all,” Bedford said. “It would have been difficult to play our style and then lose and then we question ourselves a little bit but I don’t think we have to question ourselves right now. I think we realize what we did wrong and we move on. It is what it is.”

Wednesday’s game can be heard on CJNB/CJNS, with the Ultra-Print pre-game show beginning at 7:15 p.m.

 

 

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