A bad break and an untimely hole highlighted an unfortunate end to the playoffs for the Sicamous Eagles.
The Eagles fell on the losing side of a 5-4 tally against the Kamloops Storm Sunday, bringing an end to Sicamous’ hopes of advancing in the Kootenay International Junior Hockey League Okanagan Conference playoffs.
Sicamous had swept game one, a Valentine’s Day contest, 5-3 in Kamloops. The day after their Kamloops hosts delivered an 11-2 drubbing. Eagles manager Wayne March says the team got off to a bad start that game when they went to warm up.
“We took one shot and hit the glass behind the net, shattered the glass and we didn’t get a warm up,” says March. “So we came out stone cold, and it showed. They got their 15-minute warm up, and we had to just pass the puck back and forth.”
Game three, played Thursday in Sicamous, ended in an unusual circumstance. The game was called off in the third period, with the teams tied one-all, because of a hole that developed in the ice near the visitor’s players box.
“What we figured is somebody dropped a bottle of Gatorade in the players box, right near the boards… and it seeped down under and got onto the ice and of course, sugar and ice don’t mix,” said March.
On Friday, the two teams faced off again in Sicamous to finish off the 13 minutes and 24 seconds left over from the previous night. Neither team was successful in scoring during regular play. The 1-1 tie was broken in overtime with a fine upstairs shot from Kamloops’ Kurt Torbohm.
As soon as game three, game four was on. The Storm put in a single in the first period, but Sicamous came back in the second frame with back-to-back goals from David Harrison, assisted by Mark Arnold, Dominick Hodges and Jean-Luc Fournier. The Storm managed to tie the game at 1:07.
The Storm came on hard in the third frame, potting three to Sicamous’ single delivered by Easton Bodeux, resulting in a 5-3 defeat for the Eagles.
While there were no stars in the contest, before it began Mark Arnold was given the MVP nod for the Doug Birks Division.
In third period of game five on Sunday, with second left on the clock, a scrum resulted in the Eagles racking up 13 penalties to four by Kamloops. March said this is under review, but the end result stands.
“We had our chances, believe me,” said March. “I just think, we played as hard as we were capable of playing, and being as young and inexperienced as we were, it showed… and they played well, you can’t take that away from them.”