Losing skid brings question marks

The numbers speak volumes–the Muskies are 7-0 in NorWOSSA play but just 2-5 against American teams this season, including five-straight losses.
So the question remains–how good or how bad are the Muskies? Or better yet, just what is the talent level of NorWOSSA?
As the black-and-gold get ready to face the 3-4 Sioux Lookout Warriors for a pair of games there this weekend, head coach Glen Edwards will concede NorWOSSA squads haven’t posed much of a challenge so far vis-à-vis the American ones.
“The league is weak in one respect that the teams up north do not have any premiere hockey players and teams like Dryden do not have those two good players,” he noted Monday morning.
Although the Muskies have dominated league play to date, outscoring their opponents by a whopping 67-7 margin, that’s not to say the Muskies will be taking the Warriors lightly.
“Sioux Lookout always plays well up there,” Edwards said.
At the same time, he isn’t ready to push the panic button just yet despite losing all three games at the Warroad X-mas tournament last week (7-0 to Osseo, 7-1 to Warroad, and 5-1 to Grand Forks Central), noting the playoffs are still several weeks away.
“I think it’s important to get back on the winning track because we were beat up mentally and physically [in Warroad] and we want to get our focus back on the league,” he reasoned.
“The next series is very important for us to get our confidence back and you always want do well in your league,” agreed assistant coach Ken Christiansen. “[But] we can’t panic because we should be there at the end.”
Edwards certainly doesn’t expect to skate into Sioux Lookout and dominate them like they did here in late November–drubbing the Warriors 11-1 and 13-0.
Especially considering the Muskies have been decimated by injuries of late.
While not making any excuses, Edwards felt it was unfair to judge his team’s performance at Warroad given the injuries that kept several of their key players out of the lineup.
Out at one time or another during the tournament were Jeff Savage, Jesse Rodrigues, James Asplund, Ross Anderson, Lorne Koski, and Tom Rose. Edwards noted the team had been playing well in the early going of their opening game against Osseo until they lost Asplund with a broken wrist.
And when you take six players out of any lineup, that team will be hindered considerably.
“Every game, you just pray that you get through it–it’s just something we’re going to have to work through.”
Still, Edwards felt how his team stacked up against American squads was a “wake-up call.”
“I saw it in the [International] Falls game,” he noted, referring to the Muskies’ loss there last month. “There was a big difference in that their seniors played better than our seniors because they were stronger.”