A BUSY WEEKEND OF HIGHS AND LOWS SEES THE RED LIONS MAKE THE LEAGUE FINALS
The taste of victory and the twinges of disappointment vie for attention during this update of the Red Lions, the senior hockey team in the town of Kindersley. Victory as the Lions crested into the League Finals after Sunday’s roaring win against Macklin, and disappointment as a hard loss to the Lumsden Monarchs booted the Lions out of the Provincial arena last Friday.
But before we take a further look at last weekend’s results let’s take a step back and review how the Provincial and League have gone for the Lions this year.
The Lions pounced into Provincials early last month with a 2-0 series win over the Shaunavon Badgers. In a previous interview, Coach Wayne Sampson credited the dedicated winter practice of the regular team and the syncing of the newly formed provincial team for the strong lead the Lions took into the provincials.
Round 2 for the Provincials didn’t catch the Lions in as good a place. The Lumsden Monarchs, fresh from a victory over Milestone, whammed a 1-0 series lead on the last Friday of February with a 5-3 win over the Lions. The Monarchs followed their lead up with a second and final 7-2 victory last Friday, eliminating the Lions in the provincial quarter-finals.
While some Lions fans might have had a cause to sigh over provincials, the team’s nail-biting success in the League games is enough to make it to early morning conversations in the coffee houses.
The league best-of-the-five series against the Macklin Mohawks started rather rough for the Lions after the Mohawks left the ice with a 6-3 win over the Lions on Sunday, February 18 and followed it up with a 4-3 win the next Wednesday.
The next game on February 24 was a do-or-die game for the Lions, and with their backs against the wall, the Lions pushed back with a mighty shove to take the game 5-2 and followed it up with a second victory that Wednesday 7-3.
Last weekend each team had two wins and two losses to their name in the best of the five series, so when the final game rolled around on Sunday, each team hit the ice with a furry. “The boys left everything out on the ice that evening,” Coach Sampson recalled. “They knew it was win or bust, so they won.” The Lions indeed won with a rousing 7-4 win on the Macklin ice, propelling themselves forward into the League Finals.
Coach Sampson says he is very pleased to get to this point in the league series, now the next team standing in the way of the Red Lions is the Wilkie Outlaws. The Outlaws have been sitting at the top of their league since the 2017-18 season started, and have managed to send the Lions sprawling in a couple of their previous match-ups.
But Coach Sampson is not a man easily cowed; he says he has been prepping his team for this moment right from the start of the season. “After the first game we had with the Outlaws, I sat everyone down in the locker room and told them that we would meet them again in the finals, and to remember everything about that game. Here we are, about five months later, and we are meeting them in the finals; now all we gotta do is remember what we learned from those games.”
The dates for the Best-of-the-Five series have not been set yet, so Coach Sampson is making every moment count between now and the first game. While intent on the Lions doing their best, he retains a sanguine attitude about the stiff series ahead of them. “We don’t have to think of it as beating the Outlaws three times; have to think of it as beating them once, three times. Once you break it down to one game at a time, one play at a time, the task becomes more manageable.”
UPDATE: The first of the five-game series will be in Kindersley on Sunday 11th March. Puck drop at 7 p.m.
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