Hockey heartbreaker

The Nipissing Lakers men’s hockey team felt the agony of defeat first-hand on Friday night at Memorial Gardens as their playoff drive came to a close at the hands of the Ottawa Gee Gees.It was a heartbreaking loss for the Lakers and their fans after a terrific season saw the team finish in third place in the OUA East and twice earn a spot in the CIS National Top Ten.
Nugget Sports Editor, and Nipissing grad, Ken Pagan, filed this report:Lakers' season over with 3-1 loss to Gee Gees
By Ken Pagan, The Nugget
The Nipissing Lakers hadn’t lost two games in a row since November.
But losing two straight in February means the season is over.
Now they’ll have plenty of time to ponder what could have been an extended playoff run.
Matthieu Methot scored his second of the game and third of the series with 11:08 remaining to break a 1-1 tie as the Ottawa Gee Gees ended the Nipissing Lakers’ OUA hockey season with a 3-1 win to complete a sweep in the best-of-three series in front of 1,702 fans at Memorial Gardens, Friday.
The Gee Gees had won the opener 5-2 in Ottawa on Wednesday, a little more than 48 hours earlier.
That’s how quickly things can slip away in a short series — the Lakers (17-7-4) had been the hottest team in the OUA down the stretch, winning eight of 10 games to put themselves in position as a division contender.Instead, they’re one of the first teams eliminated.
“The game itself was a pretty tight playoff game,” said Lakers head coach Mike McParland. “I thought we had a little bit more push than we had the other night in Ottawa, but unfortunately, we just didn’t have enough power. We had too many guys (struggling) with the flu.
“The disappointment is immense, there’s no question. I don’t think there’s a guy in our room who thinks Ottawa is better. I think if we’re all at 100%, we show a bit different. I think it was evident tonight that we didn’t really have our normal push.”
The second-highest scoring team in the entire OUA during the regular season, the Lakers scored just three goals in the series as Ottawa netminder Russell Abbott made key stops when necessary.
Methot opened the scoring 14:22 into the game, a deflected puck bouncing right to him at the side of the net to swat a backhand past Nipissing goalie Daniel Spence.?
The Lakers’ tied it 12:49 into the second period on a power play of their own, when Jeff Leaist tipped Brodie Beard’s point shot. The Lakers’ power play, however, sputtered during the second period, when they generated just two shots in six opportunities.
Methot’s game-winner came when he came off the bench to join the rush as a late attacker, taking a feed in the high slot and beating Spence over the short-side shoulder 8:52 into the third.
Alexandre Touchette sealed it with an empty-netter with 17 seconds remaining as the Lakers pressed for the equalizer.
Nipissing outshot Ottawa 23-18, but quality scoring chances were hard to come by.
“I thought their first line — Methot, (Luc Olivier) Blain and (Stephen) Blunden — was the difference,” McParland said, adding that Methot seems to “own” Nipissing, having scored a hat trick at Memorial Gardens in the Lakers’ first-ever Pink pre-season game in 2009.
McParland said the Lakers’ season was “outstanding,” but the short playoff series are tough to adjust to, a message he delivered in the dressing room after the game.
“I told them ‘I’m at a loss for words right now,’ because it’s the last think I expected,” McParland said. “I really believed we were going to win tonight. I congratulated them for an outstanding season, but we’re just a victim of a best-of-three series and opening on the road with a loss. That’s unfortunate.
“As we’ve said all year, the difference in our division was minimal and we saw that tonight. There wasn’t much difference in that game.”
The Gee Gees will move on to the OUA East semifinal, perhaps against the first-place McGill Redmen, who eliminated Queen’s with a 5-1 win in Kingston, Friday.
The Gee Gees were without a few regulars, including forwards Jon Carnevale, Matt White and Craig Moore. They dressed 11 forwards and seven defencemen.
While the Methot-Blain-Blunden line found legs, Gee Gees coach Real Paiement said neither team never really got things going in the tight series.
“I thought they were both strange games,” Paiement said. “There wasn’t much flow. This game, there were more power plays to break the flow, but even with that, there wasn’t much, not a lot of nice plays either way.
“It seemed both teams were limited using their skills in both games. They (the Lakers) have more skill than us, so that probably was to our advantage to have chaotic-type games and our goalie in both games made the key saves at the right time.”
Even if they won’t be back to full health by next round, Paiement said the Gee Gees should be a more confident team, having handled Nipissing.
“The way we battled, blocked shots, did the little things and sacrificed our body for each other, and because we had a few guys out of the lineup, the fact that we did beat a good team with a short bench, everybody is going to get some confidence out of that,” Paiement said.
A year ago, the Lakers swept the first round against Queen’s but were eliminated in two straight by McGill, which affected the way McParland planned to add to the roster. He’ll need some time to digest everything before preparing again for next season.
“I’ll need 24 hours to step back and think about what we did,” McParland said. “What’s hard to judge is the physical (health) of the players in this series.
“It would be unfair to judge guys who are very good players, but unfortunately were a little bit under the weather and not able to bring what they normally bring.”