Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – Entering the evening needing to win and get help to secure a first-round playoff bye, the MacEwan Griffins didn't make it past the first part of the equation, losing 3-1 to the NAIT Ooks on Saturday night.
Although they were in it on the scoreboard, down just 2-1 up until NAIT's Jake Mykitiuk hit an empty net with 16 seconds left, the Griffins never found their top gear in a game that was disjointed on both sides with the combatants combining for 50 penalty minutes.
"The game itself didn't have a ton of flow," said MacEwan head coach Mike Ringrose. "There were lots of special teams.
"We were just a little out of sync. It was a performance where we maybe looked a little bit tired, a little disjointed. In the end, I didn't think we were good enough tonight to get the points and we didn't."
It ultimately didn't matter that the second part of the equation came through for the Griffins when SAIT knocked off Red Deer College 4-3 in a game that ended more than an hour after MacEwan's did.
The Griffins finished with a 20-7-1-0 record, one point behind RDC (20-6-2-0), who net a first-round bye by placing second. NAIT (24-4-0-0) will also get a weekend off after topping the league with 46 points.
As a result, No. 3 MacEwan will host No. 6 Concordia (11-14-1-2) in a best-of-three quarter-final series next weekend.
"Are we disappointed we didn't the bye? Certainly," said Ringrose. "But a 20-win season is nothing that you should hang your head about and we won't. We're going to get to work and get ready for Concordia next weekend."
In fact, they'll be building off of it. Considering the Griffins went with 13 first-year players on the roster in their final Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference season, to come within a single point of a first-round bye held by a veteran-laden RDC team is solid.
"For a group that's that young to do what they did is impressive – 20 wins and we led the league in goals scored," said Ringrose of 137 goals in 28 games, better than NAIT's 132. "We were also second in goals against (65 to NAIT's 52) and second in penalty kill (89.6 per cent to NAIT's 89.9).
"So we have a lot of things that we can hang our hat on and a good body of work for 28 games that we can build on going into the playoffs."
On Saturday, NAIT struck first just 29 seconds into the second period when Shane Fraser found himself all alone in front to pot a powerplay rebound off Jared Legien's shot.
With 14:06 remaining in the third period, the Ooks took a 2-0 advantage when Mitchell Williams found himself untouched at the right circle and blasted a shot over Marc-Olivier Daigle's glove.
MacEwan found some life with 9:55 left in the game when Ryan McKinnon's hard shot went off Brendan Jensen's blocker, up in the air, off his back and into the net. But they couldn't beat him again as the Ooks' lone fifth-year player – in his final regular season game – made 27 saves for the victory. Daigle stopped 19 for the Griffins.
Jensen and McKinnon were named the players of the game.
A night after beating the Ooks 3-2 at the Downtown Community Arena, the Griffins didn't finish the regular season with the game they were looking for, but Saturday's contest is certainly something they can learn from.
"In games like that, you need to be able to play," said Ringrose. "Maybe we were gripping the sticks a little too tight and trying to do too much. It's important to remember no matter the situation … the game doesn't change. Tonight we just weren't right for whatever reason and we can certainly learn from that. There will be other situations in the playoffs … where we're facing a little adversity and we've got to be able to overcome that and play our game.
"That's what we can take from tonight and this weekend against NAIT, but ultimately we want to scrub things clean and we want to make sure we're fresh and ready heading into next weekend. Fortunately, we're pretty healthy, so it's just about putting something back in the tank this week, fine-tuning some areas of our game and we'll be ready to go on Friday."
ICE CHIPS … Cam Gotaas finishes the season leading the Griffins with 15 goals and 40 points in 28 games – the fifth-highest single season points total in program history and highest since Gordon Bell had 42 in 2003-04 … Gotaas also tied a program record with three short-handed goals, matching the production of Darrell Goretzki (2003-04), Dallas Smith (2016-17) and Daniel Wray (2016-17) … With a team-high 86 penalty minutes in 2019-20, Bryan Arneson is now the program's career PIM leader with 248 in four seasons … Marc-Olivier Daigle finishes his career with 4951:17 regular season minutes played, just 33 seconds shy of program leader Chris Wray, but he passed him career wins with 56 to Wray's 48.
