History will record them as just two games, but that would be like calling a Picasso just a painting, or The Godfather just a movie, or To Kill a Mockingbird just a book.
The Humboldt Broncos and Yorkton Terriers have played two games in their second round SJHL series, but leaving it at that would be to miss the point almost entirely. Each team has won one game, but to say only that would be to gloss over an endless stream of drama, intrigue, and yes, overtime periods.
Game 1 in Yorkton was an exercise in endurance, a triple overtime slugfest that ended late in the night with a David Miazga goal and a 6-5 win for the Broncos. For a team that struggled mightily to win on the road during their first round series against Melfort, it was huge for Humboldt to snatch away home-ice advantage at the first opportunity.
Two nights later, on a cold Sunday in Humboldt, the Broncos were presented with an unexpected but exhilarating chance: to take a 2-0 lead against the best team in the league and quiet any doubters who thought they had no chance.
After Cody Pongracz scored his second goal of the game four minutes into the third period, it seemed that those dreams had a real shot at becoming reality. The sizeable crowd on hand - 1,274 in all - were in hysterics, celebrating a 2-1 lead that hinted at joy to come. Fifty-five seconds later, Brett Boehm scored his second of the game for Yorkton and the stage was set for another long, uncertain slog into the night.
There were chances in the first overtime, to be sure, but there were also questions: How long could this go on? How could the Broncos, working with a patchwork lineup and riddled by injuries, keep up?
The answer came deep in the second overtime, nearly four hours after the game started, when Kallum Gervais beat Ryland Pashovitz just seconds into a Yorkton power play. It was a deflating end to a game that had certainly been within the Broncos' reach.
"It doesn't matter because at the end of the day you still lost," coach Dean Brockman said when asked if the loss hurt more than your run-of-the-mill defeat. "The series is still 1-1. After all that hockey nobody's gained anything. Would you like the games to be a little shorter? Yeah, because it's pretty taxing on your team."
Brockman struck a somewhat defiant tone about how the Terriers might have viewed the first two games of the series.
"I'm not sure how they'll look at it," he said. "They should probably feel a little lucky because if we score in overtime they're in a pretty big hole for a team that should be beating us."
Both teams have been tested by playing nearly 11 periods of hockey over two games, though the Broncos' injury concerns have made the long games an even greater challenge. Already without forwards Justin Lund, Brandon Long and Dylan Fluter, the Broncos lost Matt Audette to injury during Game 2 and his status for future games remains unknown. The rash of injuries has forced Brockman to call upon untested prospects to play major roles, including 16-year-old Logan Schatz and 17-year-old Tyler Olson, who saw his first action with the team in Game 2.
"Obviously you'd like to have more experience out there but the young kids have played really well for us," Brockman said.
The injury concerns and long games have impacted the team's off-day schedule, with Brockman saying practices will be toned down to allow the team to recover.
"It's not only physically demanding, it's tough mentally and emotionally," he said.
If Brockman and his team had been told before the series that they would split the first two games, they probably would have been happy. Now, facing the reality of how close they came to being up 2-0, a split doesn't seem quite as nice.
"It's better than being down 0-2," Brockman said. "We could be up 2-0 just as easily as being tied 1-1. A lot of people don't think we can win, but we believe that we can."
Note: The Broncos and Terriers played Game 3 of their series after the print edition of the Journal went to press. The Terriers won 6-5 and now lead the series 2-1, with Game 4 going tonight in Humboldt.
