The Estevan Bruins have played some very good games against some very good teams this season.
Friday's 6-4 win over the Flin Flon Bombers was one of them.
The next night, the Bruins lost 4-1 to the Battlefords North Stars.
It was a perfect microcosm of the entire season: inconsistency, but more than that, an inability to get up for weaker teams.
Yes, I realize the Stars are playing great hockey lately and have slipped into third place in the north, but the point is Flin Flon is a better team (at least in my eyes) and the Bruins found a way to beat them.
Entering last night's game, Estevan had a better record against above-.500 teams this year - 11-18, for a winning percentage of .379 - than they did against the weaker teams - 4-9 and a winning percentage of .307.
It's not much, but it backs up what we've seen on the ice.
The Bruins just seem to get up for the top teams in the SJHL. They don't always beat them, but most of their best games have been against them.
Case in point: the three-game winning streak against three of the best teams in the SJHL in December, two of them shutouts.
The Bruins have beaten Yorkton, Nipawin and Battlefords twice each.
And yet they often struggle to find that killer instinct against the teams below .500.
They've lost all three games to Melfort this year, and are 1-for-3 against Kindersley.
The reason this is so important is that six of the team's remaining 11 games are against teams below the .500 mark.
There are three, count 'em, three games left against Kindersley, two against Weyburn and one against Melfort.
Yes, seven of the team's remaining games are at home, but the Bruins have to play better hockey against the basement crowd of the SJHL if they want to make the playoffs.
In fact, sitting four points behind Kindersley with two games in hand heading into last night's game, the Bruins actually have a chance to finish in fourth and get home ice in the survivor series.
But crunching the numbers is one thing, and going out and doing it is quite another.
Josh Lewis can be reached by phone at 634-2654, by e-mail at [email protected], on Twitter at twitter.com/joshlewis306 or on his Bruins blog at estevanmercury.ca/bruinsbanter. Hey, it could always be worse: the Klippers didn't score a single goal on their three-game road trip to Melville and Yorkton, and they averaged only 17 shots per game in the process.
