The St. Paul Canadiens faced an unusual decision over the weekend when the team’s Friday game against the Frog Lake T-Birds was postponed two and a half minutes into the second period due to “poor ice conditions,” per the NEAJBHL website.
“Their ice plant was down before the game started,” St. Paul Canadiens head coach Joe Young said, after the weekend’s games. “As the game went on, the ice deteriorated and got worst. It became unplayable in the second period, there were ruts on the ice.”
He added, “It was a sloppy game and the puck was sticking to the ice. You could kind of tell (the postponement) is where the game was heading.”
St. Paul was trailing the T-Birds 2-1 at the time, and the remainder of the contest will be played Jan. 19 in Frog Lake, before the teams’ next regularly scheduled matchup.
Young says the approach changes when faced with finishing a game before starting a new one against the same team immediately after.
“Obviously, going into (the unfinished game) there’s no momentum on either side, so you have to create that fairly quickly. . . It’s going to be an interesting night for sure.”
The Canadiens are sitting in fourth place in the NEAJBHL, five points behind the third placed T-Birds.
St. Paul did pick up a 7-2 win over the last place Onion Lake Border Chiefs the following night on the road, with Braydon Burak leading the way with a hat trick and two assists and Zach Bendall potting two and assisting on one.
Arron Gagne scored for St. Paul a minute and 10 seconds after Onion Lake opened the scoring on the strength of a Luke Crookedneck tally to tie the game at one.
“I thought our play was very sporadic. We had some moments where we played well, and some where we didn’t. You could tell that some guys were in it and some guys weren’t,” said Young of the Onion Lake game.
A second period power play goal by Burak gave them the lead, and Bendall scored the eventual game-winner in the final two minutes of the second period for St. Paul, before they exploded for four unanswered goals in the third.
St. Paul finished one-for-three on the man advantage, while killing off all three of their penalties.
“We needed the two points that we got, and I’m happy about that, but the overall effort isn’t something we should be happy about, especially this late in the season,” said the head coach.
Goalie Devin Allen stopped 34 of 36 shots he faced for the Canadiens.
Coming up on top of the remainder of the T-Bird’s game this weekend and their regularly scheduled tilt the same night, Onion Lake has a shot at redemption for this past weekend’s loss as the Border Chiefs come to town to face the Canadiens Saturday night.
