Playoff-bound Condors need to fine-tune
Submitted by editor on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 09:19.
Richard Tardif has covered hockey, collegiate basketball and Mixed Martial Arts and lacrosse in his career and a host of many other sports. Richard expresses his views clearly, without hesitation or extravagant rhetoric. Many of his articles, which appear weekly in The Eastern Door, are based on tenacious and honest reporting that takes him behind the scenes, behind the scoring and into the heart of the game. He has followed the highs and lows of the Kahnawake Condors for the last three years.
Playoff-bound Condors struggling near season’s end
Joliette, Thetford Mines put the squeeze on junior team
Richard Tardif & Peter deer
The Eastern Door
If you ever expected the Kahnawake Condors to be out played by any team, The Thetford-Mines Filons surely wasn’t the team. The Condors lost their third in a row two Sundays past, dropping a close game 4-3 to the visiting Filons.
“We got off to a bad start,” said forward Delmar Moses.
“Our legs were not there from the start. It was just one of those games where it wasn’t working out.”
Though the Condors got their legs back in a late third period rally, they were outplayed in the first two periods.
But it could have been worse.
Condor goaltender Francis Schanck shut down Les Filons in the first after stopping 12 quality shots. Filons goaltender Alexandre Michaud did his part in facing six Condor shots. That was the story of the first period; an uninspiring effort from both teams, and to no one’s surprise the period ended scoreless.
“There’s something we have to do about this because it has been like this for three games,” said Moses, who added that the team as a whole needs to play a sixty minute game and exercise some control.
An early second period turnover by Condors Defenseman Johnathan Toussignant-Lapointe is what broke the scoring draught and may have put les Filons in control. At 3:06 Lapointe coughed up the puck from behind his net to Filon top goal scorer Tommy Giroux who had an open net for his 29th of the season.
The Condors came right back 24 seconds later after Jeremiah Coon-Come connected with Manuel Kourtoglou for a breakaway. The speedy forward scored his 33rd with a swift wrist shot that fooled Michaud.
Another turnover at centre ice by the Condors, and a long shot from just outside the Condor blue line handcuffed Schanck.
“The chemistry is obviously not that great because were not winning games, its not because we’re not trying but we’re not playing good enough,” said Condor Head Coach Guy Guertin.
“We have too many guys trying to do more and more by themselves instead of sticking to the game plan,” he said.
Les Filons made it 3-1 on a power play at 2:13 of the third, but a goal by Condor forward Patrick Provencher sparked the Condors, until les Filons scored on another power play.
Calvin Smith at 16:03, from Nicolas Biniek and Alexandre Leduc, inched the team to within one, but in the end it was Filon net minder Alexandre Michaud making some key saves in the dying minutes, with the Condor goalie pulled for an extra attacker.
When it was said and done the Condors skated off 4-3 losers of the game.
“If you want to score goals you need to go into traffic and obviously some of our players don’t want to pay the price,” said coach Guertin. “That is why they are not scoring goals. We have to suffer when we go to the net.”
With five games remaining until the post season, are they ready for the playoffs? No, says Guertin.
“We’ve had too many players missing in each game by either suspension or injuries,” said the coach.
Matthew Whittaker was out for one game nursing a knee after a vicious knee to knee check in a 5-2 loss against Joliette last Friday, and Simon Ferland-Chapdelaine was suspended for instigating a fight when he came to defend Whittaker.
After losing the last three games, the Condors are in seventh place with a 27-18-0 record with 57 points. Sherbrooke and Granby, both winners over the weekend, are occupying fifth and sixth spots.
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