After a weekend split with their Highway 10 rivals from Melville the Yorkton Terriers find themselves tied with those same Millionaires in the Viterra Division.
With a record of 8-16-0-1, identical to the Mils the Terriers have 17 points, which also happens to be worst in the entire Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League.
In the Viterra Weyburn leads the way with 39-points, with Estevan second 10 points back with 29.
The Terriers started their weekend set with Melville Friday in the Mils’ barn, where the visitors found themselves down in a hurry.
Corwin Stevely was assessed a major for a blow-to-the-head 1:07 into the game, with Carter Hansen scoring on the ensuring powerplay at 12-seconds later.
A slashing call would negate the remainder of the major, but Quentin Greenwood scored during four-on-four play to make it 2-0 at 3:59.
Tyler Chavez-Leech would make it 3-0 at 9:21.
The second period would be scoreless, but Mark Zvonkovic would strike at 4:09 of the third to round out a 4-0 Melville win.
Brandon Wells recorded the Melville shut-out turning away all 40 Terrier shots.
Jakon Severson was tagged with the loss facing 34-shots in the Yorkton net.
Terrier head coach Trent Cassan said the Terriers have had trouble lately getting down early in games, and then finding a way to get back into games. And that was the case in Melville where they were down within minutes, and couldn’t get back into it.
“Right from the start it meant more to them (the Millionaires), than us,” he said, adding Melville showed more “passion” in the game.
“We did have some chances … We played in spurts … But we didn’t have enough bite in our game.”
A night later in Yorkton the Terrier offence was back on track, including striking for three powerplay goals.
The first goal with the man advantage came 2:33 into the contest from Brandon Sookro.
That would prove the lone goal of the opening frame.
In the second Carson Welke made it 2-0 at 5:09 before Sookro added his second of the night on the powerplay at 15:10.
Devin Gerwing extended the home team lead to 4-0 4:34 into the third, before the Mils finally broke Matt Kustra’s shut-out bid.
Dalton Menke scored at 5:30, and Tyson Predinchuk added one with a man advantage 12:31 into the final frame to cut the Terrier lead in half.
But at 16:24, again on the powerplay Sookro would complete his hat trick, and wrap up scoring for a 5-2 Terrier win.
Kustra would face 44-shots for the win, while Josh Bykowski saw 33 in the loss for Melville.
Coming on the heels of the loss a night earlier, Sookro said the Terriers needed a bounce back.
“It’s a huge win bouncing back after a poor performance last night,” he said.
The key was added consistency, said Sookro.
“It felt like a full 60-minutes tonight,” he said.
Cassan was less sure about the 60-minute.
“We won the second and third periods,” he said, adding in the first it was more of a tied effort, even though the Terriers lead 1-0 after 20-minutes.
“The first period we were pretty physical … but it was sloppy.”
As for the hat trick, Sookro said “it feels amazing,” quickly sharing the success with his teammates, in particular the third goal which defected off Sookro and in. He said sometimes when the puck is going in, the break work in a player’s favour too.
Cassan was happy to see the Terriers put up five goals.
“We’ve been struggling to score goals,” he said, adding the team’s powerplay had been clicking earlier in the season “but teams were on to it a bit.”
So the Terriers “changed things up a bit,” said Cassan, adding “it was lot more effective tonight.”
Sookro said managing a bounce back should help the Terriers realize they can compete against any team as long as they put forth a complete effort.
“These games going into Christmas are obviously huge,” he said, adding while the Terriers are currently not in a playoff position, there is not huge points to make up to get into contention, and that goal means competing through to the seasonal break. “It’s just play 60-minutes every night.”
Cassan said the team has to finds ways to win more regularly to get back into the playoff hunt.
“Losing streaks really drop you down the standings,” he said.
Cassan said the key will be having veterans take another step for the team.
“We’ll need to lean on our veterans more. We have to challenge them as a group more. We can get more out of them,” he said.
Up next
The Terriers host La Ronge Thursday at the Farrell Agencies Arena, then head to Humboldt for action Friday.
