The Yorkton Harvest scraped though a tough week, piling up three losses to drop them to 11th place in the 12 team Saskatchewan AAA Midget Hockey League (SMAAAHL).
Wednesday night the Harvest hosted the visiting Tisdale Trojans at the Farrell Agencies Arena. The Trojans claimed an 8-5 win on the strength of a four goal first period and a three goal third.
Wyatt Garagan, Brayden Gelsinger, Rylan Freed and JJ Coleshaw did the damage in the first frame to give the Trojans a 4-1 lead after 20 minutes.
Lynnden Pastachak scored Yorkton's lone first period goal, an unassisted marker midway through the period.
The Harvest appeared to rally in the second period with three goals to make a game of it.
Jake McMillen started the second period rally with an early powerplay goal assisted by Blake McMillen and Brayden Park.
Dakota Odgers scored Yorkton's third goal assisted by Nicholas Poulliot and Josh Lees.
Tanner LeSann's solo marker pulled the Harvest within one goal.
Garagan scored his second of the game to give Tisdale a one goal margin after two periods.
Tisdale slammed the door on a Harvest comeback with three third period markers, one each from Jay Aasen, Gelsinger and Rhett Handley.
Odgers notched his second of the game, a late powerplay marker assisted by Brodie Shuett and Devin McGonigal.
Harvest head coach Jeff Odgers says, "You can't come out and have a team score four goals in the first 10 minutes of hockey. That's a long ways to climb back and just can't happen."
Odgers attributes the loss to a couple of bad bounces and the Harvest penalty kill. "We gave up way too many powerplay goals against and we're not scoring when we have opportunities," he states.
He says there may be some adjustments on the special teams to find a way to apply more pressure in the penalty kill. "We end up spending way too much time in our own zone and we're not generating enough pressure ourselves on our powerplay, so those are two areas we're going to have to look at in practise during the next couple of days," Odgers states.
The Harvest showed some resiliency when they came back and won the second period 3-1. "The guys battled hard and competed for that," he points out.
Heading to Swift Current for the long weekend, Odgers says he hopes the team comes together on the road start to turn around against the Legionnaires.
Unfortunately for Yorkton, it was not to be as the Legionnaires squeaked out a narrow 4-3 win over Yorkton at the Credit Union Iplex.
Pastachek scored the lone goal of the first period assisted by LeSann and Taylor Clark to give Yorkton a 1-0 lead after 20 minutes.
Nicholas Poulliot's powerplay goal less than a minute into the second period gave Yorkton a 2-0 lead after two periods. Blake McMilland and Brayden Park claimed assists.
A four goal third period rally by the Legionnaires handed Swift Current a 4-3 come-from-behind win on a pair of goals by Justin Sragrud and one each by Blayke Fournier and Dexter Bricker.
Devin McGonigal added Yorkton's lone third period goal.
To add insult to injury, Swift Current claimed a 6-3 win despite being outshot 38-22 by the Harvest in the second game of the series.
The Legionnaires took a 1-0 first period lead on the lone goal of the period scored by Carter Forsyth.
Swift Current added four more goals in the second frame, one each by Cody McKinnon and Justin Spragrud as well as a pair of goals by Tim Vanstone.
The Harvest rallied to add a pair of third period markers by Pastachak. Kody Thue and Jake McMillan assisted on the first goal while McMillan assisted on the second.
Vanstone's empty net goal capped the scoring in the game.
The losses leave the Harvest with a 1-7 record for the current season, two points out of the league basement.
