(Photo Supplied: Fort McMurray Oil Barons forward Hayden Ursulak fights for the puck against the Sherwood Park Crusaders at the Casman Centre on January 9, 2016. Dan Lines / FORT MCMURRAY OIL)
Audio: Oil Barons Head Coach Tom Keca discusses a 5-1 loss to the Sherwood Park Crusaders
All it took was two separate stretches of 21 seconds for the Oil Barons to see Saturday night’s game against Sherwood Park slip away in what ended as a 5-1 victory for the Crusaders.
“This may sound stupid, and I’ve been called worse this year but we lose a game 5-1 but that’s probably the most complete game that we’ve played,” said Oil Barons Head Coach Tom Keca on the ROCK 97.9 post-game show. “There’s a two minute stretch that I’d like to take out where they scored two goals in the first period 21 seconds apart in the first period that killed us and two short-handed goals.”
Jordan Steenbergen opened the scoring on the power-play midway through the opening frame it was the only goal of the game for the MOB the only man-advantage marker on six opportunities.
“Odd-man rushes and power-plays either give you momentum or they take momentum away from you and I thought that our power-play did a horrible job today.”
The Crusaders stormed back to take the lead late in the first with goals 21 seconds apart by Luke Kempf and Ben Sowa at 16:08 and 16:29 respectively.
After a scoreless second period Ryan Kruper broke his two game pointless streak with a goal to put the Crusaders up 3-1. Then it was another 21 second meltdown, first Merritt Oszytko beat Eric Szudor on a short-handed breakaway at 10:28, then Tyler Maltby notched his AJHL leading 40th goal of the season walking in all alone and snapping a shot past Szudor’s glove.
Szudor who had faced 40 shots or more in six of his 20 starts had a quiet night with just 23 shots against. Zach Dyment stymied the MOB with a few great saves sprinkled through his 28 stops on 29 shots.
“I thought that we got contributions from everybody. We got to pucks, we moved pucks, we did so many good things and to not get rewarded is a little frustrating,” said Keca. “When we take shifts off we end up pulling the puck out of the back of our net.”
The loss was the MOB’s sixth in a row. They’ll take on a likely first round opponent in the Whitecourt Wolverines Sunday afternoon.
“Obviously they’re a very skilled team they love to attack with four guys, their defencemen engage on every opportunity.”
Puck-drop is scheduled for 2:30 p.m., you can listen to the game live on ROCK 97.9 starting with the pre-game show at 2:15 p.m.
