The Flin Flon Bombers never expected the defending champion Melfort Mustangs to roll over in the Canalta Cup Final.
And they aren’t.
The series is a best-of-three affair, tied at two wins apiece, as the Bombers head into Melfort Friday night.
Fresh off a 5-1 home loss Wednesday, head coach Mike Reagan will be looking for a stronger effort.
“We had an opportunity to take a stranglehold of this series,” Reagan told 102.9 CFAR’s Rob Hart following Wednesday’s loss, “and we just – guys, I don’t know if they mentally thought that it was going to be easier [but you] gotta realize you gotta show up every night, and we didn’t do that.”
Added Reagan: “[Melfort] wanted it more than we did, and that’s disappointing.”
Wednesday was disappointing for other reasons as Bombers forwards Kristian St. Onge and Jason Lavallee both left the game with injuries.
Reagan told Hart that St. Onge’s status was “pretty positive.” Of Lavallee, he said “hopefully it’s not as bad as we think it is,” though the winger would be assessed after returning from hospital.
Wednesday also marked a stellar 2016 playoff debut for Mustangs goaltender Richard Palmer.
The towering veteran netminder gave up just one goal on 43 shots in place of rookie Evan Plotnick. Barring injury, Palmer appears likely to start for Melfort on Friday night.
In the Flin Flon net, Reagan has been rotating Zac Robidoux and Brenden Newton according to which of his puckstoppers has the hot hand.
Newton was between the pipes for Tuesday’s 4-2 win and stopped 34 of 38 shots on Wednesday. Will that be enough to earn him the nod in game 5?
A victory for the Bombers on Friday would give them a chance to wrap up the series on home ice, as game 6 goes Sunday at the Whitney Forum.
Attendance for Flin Flon’s two championship series home games has been strong, with 1,507 fans on hand Tuesday and 1,633 out Wednesday.
At least those are the official numbers. Some fans on hand believed actual attendance was higher.
The series marks the first time Flin Flon and Melfort have met in the SJHL final. In a pre-series interview with The StarPhoenix, Reagan described the Mustangs as “kind of a mix of both teams that we’ve played so far,” referring to Weyburn and Battlefords.
