A two-game road swing into the southern part of the province didn’t go exactly how the Battlefords North Stars drew it up.
The defending Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League champions saw a seven-game win streak come to an end Friday in a 3-2 loss Friday to the Estevan Bruins and then suffered a 5-2 setback a night later to the Notre Dame Hounds in Wilcox.
“We had too many passengers out there tonight,” North Stars head coach and general manager Brandon Heck said after Saturday’s game. “You can’t win when you only have three defenceman out there.”
MacGregor Sinclair and Chaseton Braid provided the offence for the North Stars in their loss at the Duncan McNeill Arena, which saw their record drop to 19-5-1-0 for the season.
“I felt like we worked hard in the third period and we were able to generate some chances on offence, so that was by far our best period of the night in that sense,” Heck said.
Taryn Kotchorek turned aside 28 shots in goal for the visitors.
The Hounds, who have an 18-7-1-3 mark and moved a point ahead of the North Stars in the race for first place in the Olympic Buildings Division, received a two-goal performance from Chance Longjohn and two-point nights from Chaz Smedsrud and Jack Flaman.
Christopher Bernard also found the back of the net and Jacob Standen made 27 saves.
Braid and Young scored for the North Stars in Estevan and Kotchorek stymied the Bruins shooters on 20 occasions in a game that had a lot less shots between the two sides than in their previous encounters this year.
“We were hoping that we didn’t give up as many shots as we had in our other games against Estevan, so I have to give a lot of credit to our guys for doing what we wanted on defence,” Heck said.
“We had a number of quality chances, but we just didn’t bare down enough out there.”
Hayden Guilderson, Jerzy Martin and Jake Fletcher all scored for the hosts, who have a 17-10-2-1 mark and received a 21-save performance from netminder Matt Lukacs.
The North Stars will look to return to the win column Tuesday at 7:30 p.m., as they’ll host the Humboldt Broncos at the Civic Centre in their annual Teddy Bear Toss game.
