The Muskie boys’ hockey team showed flashes of strong play near the end of the regular season, but youth and lack of depth finally caught up with them in the playoffs.
The defending all-Ontario champs were swept out of the best-of-three NorWOSSA semi-finals by the Dryden Eagles—losing 5-1 up there Friday night and then 4-1 here Sunday afternoon—to end the program’s bid for a fourth-straight league title.
Head coach Glen Edwards admitted he wasn’t used to the early exit but said the team—which sported 14 rookies—improved as the season went on.
“I’m not happy. I thought by end of the year we would be a better hockey team. I thought we improved,” said Edwards, whose fourth-place team went 4-10-2 during the regular season.
“We did get better but I didn’t think we came as far as we should have,” he admitted.
Eagles head coach Darryl Mousseau said one of the difference in the series was experience.
“Obviously [the Muskies are] a young team. They played hard,” said Mousseau, whose team is still in the hunt for their first NorWOSSA title since 1998.
“But we’ve had these kids in our program together for two or three years. That was a big difference.”
Experience or no experience, Edwards said he and assistant coach Ken Christiansen perhaps did not prepare the team accordingly.
“One of the things we didn’t do was get them in tip-top shape,” he remarked. “We should have spent a bit more time on that.”
The Muskies had only two OAC students on the roster set to graduate—captain Lorne Koski and first-liner Jordan Shannon. As such, Edwards said there’s a good core to build on, including Grade 10 starting goalie Mathew Gamsby, who kept the team in a lot of games this season.
But the team has to put in the work during the off-season.
“We do have a young group of kids. We’ll only be better if these kids work hard in the off-season,” Edwards stressed. “Just coming back is not going to make them better. They’ll have to work on their own.”
Despite the presence of a junior ‘A’ team in town and a possible resurgence of a Midget ‘AA’ rep team looking for top local talent, Edwards said he won’t start recruiting.
“We’ve never recruited in the past,” he said. “I think the players know what their options are and their parents know what their options are.”
After winning three of their last five league games—including the regular-season finale against the Eagles—just to make the playoffs, the Muskies were pelted at the onset of the semi-final opener.
The Eagles jumped out to a 2-0 lead after the first period, which grew to 5-0 by the end of the second. The Muskies added one in the third (the scorer was not available).
Mousseau said it was key his team assume control of the series at home, where they had outscored the Muskies 17-1 in two regular-season wins.
“I think we had a little more of a comfort zone at home,” he noted. “We came out with a good effort in the first. That’s something we haven’t done a lot recently.”
The Muskies took their only lead of the series early in first period of Game 2 here Sunday afternoon as Terry Kellar squeak-ed a wrist shot past Eagles goalie Ryan Ewonchuk from the face-off circle.
But Hazen Todd broke in alone on Gamsby to tie the game for Dryden midway through the second. Blaine McKim notched one early in the third, leaving the Muskies to play uphill the rest of the way.
Scott Dingwall and Lonnie Edison rounded out the scoring for the Eagles, who will host the opener of the best-of-three Nor-WOSSA final tomorrow against the winner of the Red Lake-Kenora semi-final series.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
