SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2012 – “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.”
This popular phrase could certainly apply to the Canmore Eagles Junior A Hockey club after dropping a heart-breaking 5-4 overtime decision to the visiting Calgary Canucks in Alberta Junior Hockey League action at the Canmore Recreation Centre last night.
The Eagles held a comfortable 4-2 lead with less than six minutes to play in the third period, but let the game slip away as they surrendered two goals in the final minutes to force the game into overtime and Canuck’s forward Clayton Petrie completed the Canucks comeback with the overtime winner at the 1:51 mark of the extra frame.
With the overtime loss, the Eagles did pick up a single point and now sit in fifth-place in the AJHL Southern Division standings with 11 points and a record of 4-3-3. The Eagles are just three points behind the second-place Camrose Kodiaks and enjoy three games in hand.
Zack Rassell was the Eagle’s “Star of the Game” as he notched his team leading 6th and 7th goals of the season, while Steven Phee (6th) and Riley Point (2nd) had the other Canmore goals. Eagle netminder Cameron Barnes took the loss and saw his record drop to 2-1-1. The Eagles were outshot 36-35 on the night.
“We are on the verge of becoming a good team, but we are certainly not there yet,” said a disappointed Eagle Head Coach and General Manger Andrew Milne following the game. “We did a lot of things right tonight but at the end of the day, we didn’t do enough. We didn’t have enough maturity or experience to get the extra point tonight. We need to be better at understanding the game within the game. Unfortunately, we still seem to want to do things the hard way. Hopefully the boys can learn from this experience and put teams away when we are ahead.”
Canmore will play their next two games at home as they will host the Lloydminster Bobcats (2-8-1) on Friday, October 12 and the red-hot Brook Bandits (8-0-0) on Tuesday, October 16. Both games start at 7 pm.
