The Estevan Apex Bruins' recent struggles continued on Monday with a 10-5 loss to the Lumsden/Bethune Lions to open the South Saskatchewan Minor Hockey League playoffs.
The loss puts the Bruins, who are at the .500 mark in games played since Christmas, in a hole heading into Game 2 of the series on Thursday in Lumsden.
"We just didn't do what we had set out to do. We wanted to have good defensive zone coverage and shut down their top line," said Bruins head coach Tim Lequyer.
"(League scoring leader Tyson Scott) is a good player and he burnt us and we didn't have enough kids who came to play."
Scott scored four goals and Carson Cayer added a hat trick to lead the Lions, who led 4-2 after the first period and 7-4 after the second.
Braden Bentz, Brayden Schmidt and Bryce Lugt also scored for Lumsden.
Dylan Herzberg and Travis Holma led the Bruins with two goals each, with Blaine Herzberg adding a single.
The Bruins killed off a two-minute 5-on-3 late in the second period to stay within three goals, but Cayer scored 29 seconds into the third period to boost the Lions' cushion.
Herzberg scored his second goal 22 seconds after that, only to see Lumsden respond again 42 seconds later.
"We took some bad penalties. Personally, I thought the reffing was a little questionable at the end, but that happens and you just gotta play through that," said Lequyer.
"We had lots of power play opportunities ourselves and weren't able to really register any shots on net or any pressure. That's something that we've been working on all year and the kids just, they have to do it, that's all there is to it."
Lequyer said he's confident his team can pull out a win Thursday, but that they need to push for a low-scoring game, pointing out that their last game against Lumsden was an 8-6 loss in mid-February.
"It isn't the type of hockey that's going to win us games. We need to be into a 5-4 game, that type of thing.
"We know we can play with them. We can play with the other top eight teams in our league. (Monday) wasn't an example of that. It showed at times, but at times we looked rather mediocre and that's not going to get us any wins up there."
