UGLY LOSS PUNCTUATES TOUGH WEEKEND FOR VOYAGEURS
CAMROSE & LAC LA BICHE – Now that was an ugly Christmas sweater! On Festival of Trees weekend in Lac La Biche, the Portage College Voyageurs played easily their worst game of the season November 23, losing 10-2 to the visiting Augustana Vikings. Nico Gallo and Jayven Leslie scored two a piece and Jordan Bechtold added three assists as the Vikings ransacked the Voyageurs' home ice, netting unanswered goals in the third period to turn the contest into a bit of a laugher.
After the game, a frustrated Kevin McClelland didn't mince words.
"If you want to be a hockey player, you've got to be a special person that goes out and plays shift after shift and night after night," said Portage's head coach, whose troops have lost eight games in a row after a promising start to the year. "Tonight, we just didn't show a lot of character."
For most of the season, the Voyageurs have showed a lot of grit and character, and while they haven't won a lot of games, they've always battled for 60 (and sometimes 60-plus) minutes and been in the game until the final whistle. That was not the case on Saturday night. From the opening faceoff, it was clear that the Voyageurs didn't have the same drive they've shown on so many nights, finding themselves down 1-0 after less than four minutes of play and 4-1 after 40 minutes.
Despite that, they still had an opportunity to climb back into the game early in the third, when the Vikings' Briggs Jewett took two penalties at the 2:28 mark. Any hope the fans in the stands had for an early present from Santa, however, quickly turned into a tale told by the Grinch, as Augustana netted a shorthanded goal 22 seconds later.
"You know any time you get a four-minute powerplay, you think, 'Oh, OK, you know we might be able to jump back in this thing,' and then you give up a shorthanded goal, boom!" said McClelland. "That's a dagger."
From there, it was a shooting gallery as the Vikings peppered Voyageurs' goalie Luke Hall with 18 shots in the third. The lone bright spot for Portage was Isaak Watters, who potted his first two goals of the season and was named Player of the Game for the Voyageurs.
The disappointing game came on the heels of a much more impressive effort 24 hours earlier in Camrose, where the Voyageurs outshot the Vikings 29-21 and played a strong game but still lost 4-2.
"Any time you go into someone else's building and give up 21 shots, you should win," said McClelland. "But we didn't do enough, you know, not enough traffic, not enough scoring opportunities. When we did have scoring opportunities, we missed the net."
As they prepare for a pair of road games in Red Deer next weekend to wrap up the 2024 portion of the schedule, the head coach is hoping his players don't forget the bitter taste the tilts with Augustana – particularly the Saturday shellacking – left in their mouths and come back determined to end the first half on a high note.
"You gotta take some hard lessons out of this…We've got to start bearing down. We're a team that's not going to score a lot of goals and you know we've got some goals out of our lineup right now with (Tye) Evans and (Jayden) Watson.," said McClelland. "We've just got to keep things simple and tonight, we didn't and that's what happens."
Nov. 22 Player of the Game
- Portage: # 16 Mikal Chalifoux
Nov. 23 Players of the Game
- Augustana: #26 Tanner Manz
- Portage: #10 Isaak Watters
