NEW GLASGOW – The North Nova Gryphon boys hockey team’s provincial fate has come down to one more game.
After falling to the Dr. John Hugh Gillis Regional Royals earlier this week, the Gryphons entered a best two out of three wild card series with the Glace Bay High Panthers for a second chance at making it to provincials.
Thursday the Gryphons went on the road and won a hard fought 5-0 victory.
But things did not go the way they would have liked yesterday as Glace Bay came back fighting hard to keep themselves in the series with a 5-2 victory over the Gryphons.
“Glace Bay came out with a lot of pressure,” said assistant coach Brian MacLean. “I don’t think we matched their intensity for the full 45-minutes, but that’s kind of play-off hockey.”
He said the local boys just didn’t seem ready to play yesterday.
“We had spurts of really good play, but we gave up five or six powerplays.”
Penalty trouble can cost in games like this and at times the Gryphons had trouble controlling their emotions.
“We can’t be taking so many penalties, especially late in the game,” MacLean said. “They end up costing us big time as evidenced by their fifth goal. They ended up scoring that on the powerplay with seven minutes to go. That can really take the wind out of your sails.”
The nature of hockey and playoffs in particular is that there are going to be a lot of ups and downs.
‘With this age group of kids you’ve got to make sure things are on an even keel and make sure their emotions are going to the right things,” MacLean said.
The biggest task in preparing for the final game tonight is to make sure the team’s spirits don’t get too low he said. These kind of games are really the most fun to play, he said.
“I think that’s the message we’ve got to get through to them is don’t react to the pressure, but have fun with it,” he said. “This is one of those games that don’t come around too often. Tomorrow night you either go on or you lose and go home. It doesn’t get any better than that.”
Tonight’s game will be at the John Brother MacDonald Stadium at 6:30 p.m.
