The Cochrane Generals are down – but far from out – after the team’s thrilling unbeaten streak came to an inevitable end last weekend with a crushing 9-3 loss against the Coaldale Copperheads.
“I’m still trying to process it at little bit,” coach Dan Gendur said Sunday morning. “We just didn’t play very well and they did … and that’s the reflection.”
The Gens were in fine form Friday night at home against the scrappy Strathmore Wheatland Kings, where they banked their 11th win in a row with a tidy 5-2 takedown.
Saturday saw Cochrane travel to Coaldale to face off for the first time against the Copperheads, whom they cleared out of the way last spring to lock down the Heritage Junior Hockey League Southern Division trophy.
“Anytime (a team) gets knocked out, there’s always that fire when you play them the next year,” Gendur said.
The end of the first period saw an even match-up, with each team logging two on the board. By the end of the second period, however, Coaldale had pulled ahead with a score of 5-2, and in game’s last 20 minutes, the Copperheads put in seven unanswered goals before the Gens popped one more into the net – making it 9-3 at the final buzzer.
“After the second period, we all still wanted to play,” forward Corey Goeson recalled. “(But) the momentum shifted, and then it’s hard to battle back from that.”
Goeson, who has played with the Gens for four years, said it was “pretty quiet” in the dressing room after the loss.
“We all knew what was at stake,” he said. “Everybody knew what we did wrong and what we had to work on. It’s just tough to not blame the game on your teammates – you really have to look internally and reflect. There’s always stuff I wish I could do differently.
“It’s kind of a reality check, in a sense. We did want to go 12 and 0 and continue to strive.”
Gendur pointed to a slide in effort and a “poor week at practice” as signals the team wasn’t at its tightest going into the Saturday game.
“I’ve been around this group long enough to know what I see, especially when it comes to effort,” he said. “It gets really reflected in games.”
Despite the hard fall, winning the first 11 games in a row to kick off the hockey season is something to celebrate.
While not a league record, 11 straight wins is a franchise record.
“Definitely I am proud of our team and how much we have accomplished so far this season,” Goeson said. “But we know, as a group, that we can accomplish so much more.”
Gendur echoed the thoughts, saying he knows the Generals may be down, but they’re not out, as they still maintain top standing in the league.
“There are some good teams definitely in our league. We still have a lot of games against them,” he said. “If we beat those teams, we’ll be where we want to be.”
The Generals will get back on the horse this weekend with two games Friday and Saturday against the Mountainview Colts. Saturday is a home game, starting at 7:30 p.m. at Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre, with a third match Sunday in Ponoka against the Stampeders.
Goesen said he and his fellow players will need to have a lot more intensity, practice at full-game speed and, most importantly, ditch any disappointment about their loss in order to tackle the busy weekend and keep moving onward and upward.
“It’ll be a test for sure,” he said. “We’re just going to have to put it behind us and focus on the future. It’s just a road bump.”
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