PHOTO: Calgary Flames public address announcer Beesley (right) joined Canmore Eagle music man Gord Fielding in the Eagle's broadcast booth for Saturday night's game, but it wasn't enough as the Eagles lost 5-2 to the Camrose Kodiaks. – photo courtesy of Julie Wilson.
Jody Sick scored his second hat trick in as many nights to lead the Camrose Kodiaks to a 5-2 victory over the Canmore Eagles in Alberta Junior Hockey League action on Saturday night and provide the Kodiaks with a weekend sweep of their two-game series in Canmore.
Sick also had a three-goal performance in Friday night’s 7-4 Kodiak victory over the Eagles. The weekend sweep by the Kodiaks marked the fifth time that Camrose has come to Canmore and swept the Eagles since this double-header tradition was established in 2001-2002. It also enabled the Kodiaks to extract some measure of revenge after the Eagles upset them in last year's opening round playoff series.
Unlike Friday’s game, when the Eagles were badly outshot 46-27, Canmore came up with a much stronger effort on Saturday as they outshot the Kodiaks by a 40-32 margin, and held a wide 22-6 shot advantage at one point early in the second period.
“You have to give them credit – they really came after us this weekend and established a very high tempo of play,” said Eagle’s Head Coach and General Manager Andrew Milne, whose club was missing two key defenceman as both Jakob Lavoie and Brayden Biccum sat out with injuries. “We responded with a much better effort on Saturday night, but we just didn’t convert on our opportunities early in the game and it came back to haunt us as the game wore on. They capitalized on their chances and then they effectively shut us down. Camrose is one of the top junior teams in the country and we just had too many passengers on our team who didn’t respond to the challenge.
“But they don’t hand out any trophies in November. The season is 60 games long and it is a process. We're just 20 games into the season and we didn’t accomplish what we wanted to this weekend. We’ll regroup and learn from this experience. We can certainly play better and we will.”
With the two weekend losses, the Eagles record drops to 9-11, while the Kodiaks improved their record to an impressive 15-2-2.
Canmore will now hit the road next weekend with games in Whitecourt on Friday (Nov. 7), Drayton Valley on Saturday (Nov. 8) and a tough re-match against the Kodiaks in Camrose on Sunday afternoon (Nov. 9).
NOTEBOOK: Eagle goal scorers in Saturday night’s loss were defeneman Nikolas Kosman (3rd) and Brett Schimmel (2nd). Eagle netminder Ryan Ferguson took the loss and saw his record drop to 7-10. Jeremy Gordon was named the Eagle’s “Star of the Game” . . . Special thanks to Calgary Flames PA announcer Beesley for coming out to Canmore to perform the PA duties in Saturday night’s game. As usual, his booming voice was a great addition to the atmosphere at the Canmore Recreation Centre.