An opportunity to end round two of the playoffs slipped through the Kimberley Dynamiters’ fingers on Thursday, March 10 at the Civic Centre, with Kimberley losing in overtime to the Columbia Valley Rockies 5-4.
With the exception of game two, every game’s outcome has been within one goal so far this series. Thursday’s game was another close one, but unfortunately the Nitros weren’t quite able to get the job done.
“We definitely did not come out hungry enough,” head coach, general manager Derek Stuart said. “I thought the players came out as if it was just going to happen for them. I actually thought both teams were kind of tentative at the start — not many shots on net, not many scoring chances.”
The team needs to continue to work on starting stronger, and while there were some positive takeaways, especially from the second and third periods, the Dynamiters’ biggest downfall on Thursday was their mindset.
“I think the mindset wasn’t where it needed to be in terms of having a killer instinct tonight,” Stuart added.
Christian Mealey scored his first of three goals for the night just one minute into the first, but Columbia Valley answered back just a few minutes later and it was clear from the get go it was not going to be an easy game.
“I just think the guys need to understand that [Collumbia Valley] are not going to roll over and die, we need to go out and earn the fourth win and I thought tonight perhaps too many of them at the start of the game thought it was going to be easy,” Stuart said. “Especially with that gimme of a goal, that real flukey goal that we scored, I thought that didn’t help the mindset either. We’ve just got to be more mentally strong and realize that we need to go out and earn the fourth win.”
The Nitros put two more goals on the board in the second, both on the power play and the Rockies added one of their own making it a 3-2 game heading into the third period.
After two more unanswered goals from the Rockies it started to look like the Nitros were in trouble. They then failed to capitalize on a power play and then with just a couple minutes left they decided to pull goalie Trystan Self.
With less than a minute remaining the Dynamiters piled on the Rockies’ net and the crowd of just under 700 erupted as the puck snuck past the goal line. Golden fans in the audience decried this, yelling at the ref that the net had come off and the goal shouldn’t have counted.
The controversial goal counted nevertheless and the game headed into overtime, and it would ultimately the Rockies who would come out on top with a fantastic goal from Kayde Kinaschuk.
The Dynamiters don’t have a lot of time to reflect on the loss and will have to dig deep and work hard at the next game Friday, March 11 if they want to beat the Rockies on their own turf.
“The least of my concerns is our conditioning, we’re in real good shape, we do a lot of work on a lot of skating and off-ice work, conditioning wise,” Stuart said.
“They’ve prepared themselves 100 times this year already, so they need to make sure that they understand that they’re not going to roll over, they’re a top-five team in the league, they’re a legit championship contender and they’re not just going to go away we need to make them go away.”
paul.rodgers@kimberleybulletin
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