It was a weekend where the bounces didn’t go in favour of the Battlefords Sharks.
Despite having a ton of scoring chances in both of their games at the Battleford Arena, the Sharks came out on the losing end of 5-1 and 6-0 battles with the Melville Prairie Fire.
“We skated well in five out of the six periods this weekend and it’s too bad that we didn’t have a better outcome,” Sharks head coach Gary Berggren said.
“The girls played well for the majority of both games but we just couldn’t seem to cash in on our chances.”
Saturday’s game, which was originally set to take place in Radisson but was moved due to poor ice conditions, was tied up at one until midway through the third period when the Prairie Fire rattled off four unanswered goals.
“They had just gone up 2-1 when we scored to tie it up, but the refs disallowed the goal due to goaltender interference and we ended up on the penalty kill,” Berggren said.
“It was a close game all the way through and the final score wasn’t a true indicator of how even things were.”
Alyssa Roach had the lone goal for the Sharks while netminder Chloe Burt made 40 saves.
Megan Leblanc had a pair of goals to lead the way for the Prairie Fire.
The Sharks ran into a red-hot netminder Sunday afternoon in the rematch, as Ashlyn Taillon made 33 saves to earn her third shutout of the season.
“That was a pretty interesting game,” Berggren said. “We didn’t have a good first period, but we were only down 1-0 and we played really well for the rest of the game.
“It seemed like every shot we had on net wouldn’t go in, while every shot they had ended up in the back of the net. Our goalie Chloe played really well once again, so it wasn’t on her, but we didn’t do a good enough job of helping her out.”
Sami Jo Henry was impressive for the Prairie Fire Sunday as she had two goals and two assists.
Prior to their two games against Melville, the Sharks suffered a tough 10-2 setback to the Prince Albert Northern Bears on Jan. 25 at the Art Hauser Centre.
Ensley Fendelet and Jesse Herner both scored in the loss.
With the Saskatchewan Female Midget AAA Hockey League off this weekend due to SaskFirst camps, the Sharks won’t be back in action until Feb. 11 when they’ll host the league-leading Saskatoon Sharks.
“We are at a point in the season now where we’re just working on the little things,” Berggren said.
“Our defensive zone coverage needs to be better and we need to work on our power play. It was clicking really well about a month ago, but for whatever reason, we’ve been struggling with that part of our game lately.”
The Sharks are currently in seventh place in the league standings with a 6-17-1 record.
