With under twenty games left in the 2012/13 Saskatchewan Midget AAA hockey season the Harvest were heading into weekend meetings with the Tisdale Trojans and the Moose Jaw Generals with one goal in mind, stay in the top eight. After getting a win over the Notre Dame Argos before the break to climb back into eighth place after being one of the worst teams in the SMAAAHL for the first two months of the season, the Harvest would need to keep pace against two near locks for the playoffs if they were to keep above the Saskatoon Blazers for that all important eighth seed.
Saturday's meeting with the Trojans came with the Harvest returning a large group of players back from SJHL action as Dakota Odgers, Lynnden Pastachak, and Eric Meyer all took part in holiday Junior A action before heading back down to Midget AAA giving the Harvest a group of players who were in game form heading into the weekend.
The playoff atmosphere of the next two months showed early on as the Harvest jumped out to a 4-0 lead. Two of Eric Meyer's three goals on the night opened the scoring before Nicolas Pouliot and Turner Ottenbreit got on the board to make it 4-0, a late Trojans goal made it 4-1 heading into the second but the Harvest were simply in a different class Saturday night. Pastachak scored two goals in the third before Meyer and Korwin Shewchuk added late tallies to give the Harvest an impressive 8-2 blowout win over the sixth placed Trojans.
Dakota Odgers, fresh off a solid two game stint with the Terriers where he notched an assist and a fight was the game's top playmaker with a staggering five assists in his return to Midget AAA and was arguably the best player on the ice Saturday.
Meyer and Pastachak also proved why they were also called up to SJHL teams with their offensive performances against Tisdale showing that despite their low standing in the league, the Harvest have future WHL and Junior A talent that allow them to be in any game against any team.
After Saturday's hot start the Harvest took to the FAA yet again this time during the afternoon on Sunday as they took on a Moose Jaw Generals team that they took three of four points off of on the road in December. With the Saskatoon Blazers losing on Saturday night to the Battlefords Stars the Harvest had a huge opportunity to greaten their playoff odds yet again with two points off a Generals team they had beat and tied less than a month ago.
However, the kind of quick start the Harvest had on Saturday night was nowhere to be found as the Generals scored three goals in the opening ten minutes, including a controversial one involving goaltender interference on Carson Bogdan that lead to a crucial goal for the Generals. After the slow start the Harvest settled in, but could not gain any valuable momentum in a game that was scoreless and uneventful on both ends for the remaining 50 minutes in what was a 3-0 win for the Generals.
Head coach Jeff Odgers was not happy with the interference on the Generals goal but had no excuses saying, "We should have cleared out the puck and it didn't matter in the end because we came out flat and couldn't get it done." Odgers was happy with the play of his team during the Trojans game and the big contributions of his SJHL call ups, "It is a huge boost to our players games when they get called up to an SJHL/WHL team and gives them a little bit of an extra boost and motivation from playing at the next level which is big for our team" said Odgers.
Carson Bogdan had a solid weekend in goal, making 31 saves against the Trojans and 33 saves in the loss to the Generals. Odgers had nothing but praise for Bogdan saying, "He made some huge saves for us on a odd man rush early in the Tisdale game and a save on a turnover that led to a breakaway and the kid stepped up and made four of five huge saves that allowed us to pull away."
A playoff atmosphere will be in the FAA once again this week as the Harvest will take on the eighth place Notre Dame Argos in a game that very well could be looked back on as a turning point come the end of February when the standings become final. Odgers has embraced the playoff atmosphere their slow start created and uses it as a positive, "We get to have the experience of every game being big and we aren't going to be one of those teams that back into the playoffs, if we do make it we are going to have serious momentum heading in and everyone remembers how the LA Kings did in the Stanley Cup after battling for everything they got all year and finishing eighth so we have embraced the situation we are in" said Odgers.
The Argos/Harvest have had close meetings in their last two games in Wilcox, splitting the two games, expect more of the same as two teams hungry to make the playoffs continue to leave it all on the ice.
