It’s official: the North Stars are definitely in a slump.
There was no other way to put it after a 3-2 overtime decision at the Civic Centre in favor of the Kindersley Klippers, the club’s first home game after five on the road.
Brendon Borbely’s goal just 1:37 into overtime, with Scott McKenzie assisting, stunned the North Stars with their third straight loss. It was also their second overtime defeat in three games, following their earlier defeat this week against Notre Dame.
While the North Stars still picked up two points this week for taking those two games to overtime, this latest overtime defeat left both the team and coach Brayden Klimosko reeling.
“We’re just not working hard enough right now, and we’re finding out the hard way,” said an agitated looking Klimosko after the game.
“We really didn’t deserve the two points. That’s why we lost, and it is what it is.”
One could have pointed to fatigue as a factor. The North Stars had just played stretches of three games back to back last week, two this week and were on a two-game home-and-home with the Klippers now. But Klimosko refused to use that as an excuse.
“We do that for a reason. We want to see how tough these guys really are,” Klimosko said.
“At the end of the day the schedule isn’t easy, you know, and we know that. And that’s all part of it, right? So we can’t use that as an excuse. We still gotta play hard. We didn’t play hard enough. You know, I give them the benefit of the doubt if we played for 60 minutes. We didn’t. (Kindersley) deserved the two points, we didn’t tonight.”
Despite that, it seemed like the North Stars had done plenty to deserve a better fate Friday night. They had outshot the Klippers 42-30 on the game, and had performed yet another one of their usual comebacks to get the game to overtime. This time, the slow start came back to bite them.
The North Stars got behind the eight-ball early on as Liam Fraser got Kindersley on the board first at the 8:30 mark of period one.
In the second period the North Stars were frustrated by some bad luck as two of their shots hit the goal post.
Not long after, Seth Summers tied it on a power-play goal from Quintin-Loon Stewardson and Matthew Fletcher at 8:34.
But Fraser’s second of the night just 25 seconds later had the North Stars behind again, 2-1 through two.
In the third, another power play goal from Austin Becker, with Dylan McCabe and Jaxon Steele at 5:57, tied the game up. But the North Stars never got the third goal that they needed.
Parker Rey wound up on the losing side after stopping 27 of 30 shots. Matt Sankner got the win after a 40-save performance.
The two teams were going to be back in action again Saturday night in Kindersley. Klimosko hoped the loss would be a learning experience for the North Stars and they would be better for the rematch.
“Hopefully they figured it out a little bit and it’s back to work tomorrow,” Klimosko said.
