Jonathon Brodie – Recorder & Times
If the Brockville Braves can learn anything from their two playoff games against the Kanata Lasers it’s that no lead is safe.
Braves Mike McArthur scored less than a minute into Game 2’s overtime to give his team a 5-4 road win Sunday and put Brockville up 2-0 in the series.
Braves coach Jesse Winchester said he isn’t exactly feeling comfortable, despite being up two games.
A win is a win, but the Braves have given up or came close to giving up three-goal leads in both post-season games against the Lasers.
On Friday in Game 1, Brockville was ahead 3-0 by the end of the second period. Kanata ended up slashing into that lead and made it 4-3 with about four minutes left in regulation.
On Sunday, the Braves stormed out to a 3-0 lead just over the halfway point of the first period. The Lasers chipped away at the deficit for the rest of the game and then tied it up with 1:28 left in regulation.
“I’m not overly worried about it.
We’d like to prevent it, obviously, but we’re still learning and we’re going to continue working through that,” said Winchester. “We had a really good chat between periods (Sunday) and they’re learning it’s hard to keep a team down, especially when their season is at stake. We’ll just keep harping on the same things that we do and hopefully we can win another two games before they get to four.”
Brockville has played far from perfect so far in the playoffs. They’re certainly not living up to the cliché of playing a full 60 minutes, and it has come close to biting them.
Practicing puck management will help limit the Lasers chances of mounting another comeback, said Winchester – a point he made after Game 1 and then reiterated after Game 2.
Whether you believe the shot count or not – there were concerns after Game 1 about it – there is no disputing the Lasers are putting more pucks on net and have outshot the Braves 82-52 in the series. Winchester said he couldn’t remember the last time his team had been blown out on the shot count in backto-back games.
The Braves out-shot their opponents in the final seven games of the regular season. They had been outshot in back-to-back games just six times before the playoffs, but three of those came in September when the bulk of the roster were inexperienced rookies getting their first taste of junior hockey and two of those times were exclusively against topranked Carleton Place.
“We’ve turned pucks over in bad parts of the rink too often and Kanata, they’re dangerous. They’re really high on skill and work super hard and the game isn’t over until it’s over,” said Winchester. “Guys are learning how hard it is to win and we’ll just keep working towards that perfect game.”
Certainly, the CCHL’s coach of the year isn’t coming down too hard on his team. They have yet to lose a game in the post-season and they’ve been taking advantage of chances.
The Braves have minimized their penalties the last two games, only going down a man just once in Game 1 and twice in Game 2.
Kanata has been fairly stingy with their penalties as well and have put only seven players in the sin bin in the series, but they may want to tighten up even more as Brockville has scored four power play goals already.
The Braves are also getting a huge help from some relatively unlikely sources and they’ve been pulling more than their fair share of weight to get the team over the hump.
After getting just 15 points in 48 regular season games, 17-year-old rookie Zac McMahon has already contributed three points in the playoffs.
Eric Faith has earned a special shout-out from his coach after each quarter-final game with Winchester pointing to his offensive prowess with a goal and three assists, as well as being defensively sound.
No one, though, might be coming up as big as Jonathan Hill, who leads the way with five points and, maybe more importantly, 30 minutes of ice time in Games 1 and 2 respectively.
“He’s going to play 30 more Tuesday and then 30 more on Thursday and Friday,” said Winchester. “He’s our engine on the back-end.”
Game 3 will be held Tuesday at the Memorial Centre. Puck drop is 7:30 p.m.
Original Story at Recorder.ca
