‘Little things’ cause men’s hockey loss

It was the little things that beat the Wilfrid Laurier men’s hockey team. | Photo by Will Huang

It was the little things that beat the Wilfrid Laurier men’s hockey team.

The Hawks saw their two-game winning streak come to an end Saturday night after a 2-1 loss to the Windsor Lancers, just a game after a valiant victory over the Ryerson Rams 3-1 last Thursday night in Toronto.

The loss drops the Hawks to ninth place with an overall record of 6-8, two points behind their rivals the Waterloo Warriors, Toronto Varsity Blues and Brock Badgers. The Hawks hold two games in hand coming into the end of the first half of the season.

“We needed two points today, it’d be huge in the standings and we didn’t get it done,” said captain Greg Cerilli. “We can obviously play better. We didn’t have many scoring chances, that result from not many shots. We had [23] shots, that’s not acceptable at home on our ice.”

According to Cerilli, nothing was working in the Hawks’ favour — Laurier didn’t stick to their game plan, the power play wasn’t working and the Hawks didn’t take many shots or create scoring opportunities. Even though Laurier scored early with a goal from Matt Dupont six minutes into the first period, the Lancers responded halfway through the period.

“Annoyed. Frustrated. Just not a good effort for our team tonight,” head coach Greg Puhalski said. “We were never able to find any balance or any rhythm to our game, it was destroyed from the very first drop of the puck.”

The score remained tied at 1-1 until the third period when Seguin solved Laurier’s second-year goaltender Colin Furlong and gave the Lancers a 2-1 lead. The Hawks turned on the pressure in the last five minutes, but could not find the equalizer.

Furlong ended the night with 24 saves.

Puhalski said if the Hawks want to find success, they need to play with desperation all the time. If the Hawks don’t put in the effort, they aren’t going to find success on the ice.

“Whenever you play sports if you don’t have your effort, and your intensity’s not there, then you better be really highly skilled, like a Crosby or an Ovechkin,” Puhalski said. “It’s the same lesson for all teams. If you don’t have your intensity, if you don’t have your work ethic, if your effort isn’t a part of your game, however you want to phrase it. If it’s not there, then it’s going to be a disjointed, mumbling, fumbling kind of game like it was for us tonight.”

The Hawks still have two more games to end the first half of the season on a high note. They host the Guelph  Gryphons at 11 a.m., on Thursday morning before travelling to play the No. 10 York Lions on Friday night. To Cerilli, this loss isn’t devastating to the Hawks — there’s plenty of hockey left.

“It’s not the end of the world. It is another game on the schedule, although it meant a lot to us in the room. It’s over with, we lost,” Cerilli said. “Nice thing is we have a chance on Thursday in front of a packed house to beat Guelph.”