The SJHL spotlight was focused squarely on the Estevan Bruins and Melville Millionares on Thursday, as the two teams kicked off the season in the only game of the night at the Horizon Credit Union Centre in Melville.
Fans around the province were watching, as it was Access 7's game of the week.
The Mils came to play. The Bruins did not. The visitors got smacked around all night in a 10-2 loss.
Melville took a 2-0 lead after one in a period where they were the better side, but not by a whole lot. Colin Mospanchuk scored the first goal in the SJHL this year.
The Bruins got off to a pretty good start in the second, but Melville scored two goals in a two-minute span and then Estevan unravelled.
That two-minute span was the turning point and the Bruins looked absolutely awful from that point on. Melville's potent offence blew them right out of the rink.
A few minutes later, Landon Hall scored short-handed and Russell Trudeau added his second of the night just 25 seconds after that to give the Millionaires a 6-0 lead after two. Starting goalie Curtis Martinu was pulled in favour of Travis Pelletier after the sixth goal. The Bruins called a long, long, long overdue timeout at that point.
The Bruins did finally score a couple of goals in the third. Tanner Froese laid claim to the team's first goal of the year at 3:06 on the power play, and defenceman Nick Sova potted his first SJHL goal a few minutes later.
Melville's play-by-play man Benny Walchuk has a scoring summary right here.
Nothing was working for Estevan on this night. It started with a rough outing for Martinu, which is certainly understandable considering he only arrived in the Energy City at 3 a.m. yesterday. He only got in one practice with the team. He was thrown into a bad situation against one of the most talented forward groups in the league, and gave up six goals on 14 shots.
And Martinu's defence didn't help him out at all. From giveaways to odd-man rushes and running around in their own end, it felt like we were watching a replay all game. Brett Dumaine and Zach Douglas were both healthy scratches last night and I think we can safely say they'll both be in tonight. Something has to change there.
Whenever the Bruins got a scoring chance they frittered it away. Missed nets, poor passing, no creativity. They had some chances early in the game, but it went from bad to worse.
There weren't even any scraps or big hits to try to give the team a spark.
I've never seen a season opener like this, at any level of hockey. If the Bruins want to keep their fans on board, they'll make sure tonight's home opener is a different story.
