One win in two road games is usually not seen as a success for the Yorkton RawTec Maulers players and coaching staff.
However when those two games are played in Tisdale and Wilcox (Notre Dame), two places where the RawTec Maulers have struggled in recent years, one win in two games is cause for a quick celebration, before they get back to business of course.
And that's exactly what happened, as the Maulers first dropped a 5-2 decision to the SMAAAHL leading Tisdale Trojans on Wednesday night before rebounding and shocking the Notre Dame Hounds 4-1 on the Olympic sized ice surface in Wilcox on Saturday.
The two most recent results give the RawTec Maulers a 10-8-2 record for 22 points on the season. More importantly, it gives the Maulers a 6-2-1 record through the month of November; a month that included wins over the second place Regina Pat Canadians (15-3-1), fifth place Prince Albert Mintos (11-4-5) and most recently third place Notre Dame Hounds (15-4-0).
The 22 points sees the Maulers sitting comfortably seventh place at the beginning of December, five points up on eighth place Beardy's (8-11-1, 17 points) and four points back of the Saskatoon Contacts (12-6-2), who the Maulers have also defeated in November.
Tisdale continues to lead the SMAAAHL with a sparkling record of 17-1-2, while Regina, Notre Dame and Battlefords (14-6-0, 28 points) round out the top four.
Tough time in Tisdale
The Yorkton RawTec Maulers travelled to Tisdale on Wednesday to battle their SMAAAHL rivals, the Tisdale Trojans, as well as former Mauler, or rather Harvest, Tyler Kreklewich.
Things couldn't have started off worse for the Maulers on Wednesday as they took two quick penalties, one an interference call on Carson Welke and the other a head contact penalty on Adam Neibrandt, to give the league leading Trojans a very early 5-on-3 powerplay.
It took the Trojans less than a minute to capitalize on the two man advantage as Kreklewich opened the scoring against his old team, beating Mauler goaltender Carter Phair on the powerplay just 2:31 into the game for a 1-0 Trojan lead.
Tisdale doubled their lead later in the period when Matthew Perkins also found a way to put the puck past Phair, giving the home town Trojans a 2-0 lead after 20 minutes of play.
Tisdale increased their lead to three with the lone goal of the second period as Caleb Seaman, with Yorkton's Logan Leslie in the penalty box for interference, scored his first of three on the night to make it 3-0 after 40 minutes.
The Maulers would cut into the Tisdale lead with a powerplay goal of their own at the 14:10 mark of the third period, however the Trojans would quickly answer with a pair of Seaman goals just 20 seconds apart to take a commanding 5-1 lead.
Derrick Budz would score his third of the campaign for the Maulers with just 24 seconds left in the game and draw the ire of the Trojan bench resulting in a Tisdale bench minor, but unfortunately it was too little and far too late as the Maulers fell 5-2 at the hands of the SMAAAHL's top team.
Phair picked up the loss in the game stopping 35-of-40 shots while Tisdale's Kye Steinke collected the win, turning aside 29-of-31 Mauler opportunities.
Despite the 5-2 loss, the Budz goal and the way the team responded after going down 5-1 proved to RawTec Mauler head coach Dan Cross that the team is far different than it was just one year ago. "If anything we came out after they scored twice there and finished the game strong," offered Cross. "That was good to see that we didn't just pack our tents in and go home but instead came out, maintained our physical presence and even scored a goal there late in the game which was nice."
But while the team finished the game strongly, Coach Cross also saw areas where the team could use some improvement, such as pouncing on loose pucks and bringing their 'A' game around the net.
"It's not like I was totally displeased or anything, I just thought we could have been a little bit hungrier around the net and on those loose pucks than we were," suggested Cross, continuing, "It was a pretty good game, they just wanted it a little bit more than us.
"They played a little harder than we did. It wasn't that we played horrible, I just thought that we could have played a little harder."
Shocking the Hounds
Cross and his coaching staff must have addressed the issue of players needing to play a little harder in the game during their practices leading up to their next game because on Saturday in Wilcox the Maulers came out flying.
Adam Neibrandt (powerplay), McKenzie Welke and Drayson Skulmoski all had first period goals, while Notre Dame's Jeff Faith also scored in a first period largely dominated by Yorkton. "They came out pretty flat and we were able to take advantage of it," offered Cross via a phone interview Sunday evening. "Again we gave up another 5-on-3 goal but we were able to come back and score two more before the end of the period to take a 3-1 lead."
The 3-1 lead looked to be in jeopardy in the second period however, as the Maulers began to find themselves in penalty trouble as McKenzie Welke was called for slashing. The RawTec Maulers managed to kill that penalty off but mere moments later hardnosed blueliner Logan Karakochuk was given five and a game for boarding, giving the vaunted Hounds powerplay an opportunity to get the home side back in the game.
But the Mauler penalty kill stood strong, bending but not breaking, keeping the Hounds off the scoreboard for the entire five minutes.
The successful Mauler penalty kill seemed to partially deflate the Notre Dame bench and before they could inflate, Yorkton's Koal Roberts completely took the air out of the Hounds' balloon when he beat Hounds netminder Scott Kasaboski for his seventh of the season with just 2:44 remaining in the second period to give Yorkton a 4-1 lead.
Carter Phair then shut the door the rest of the way for the Maulers, turning aside 17 shots in the final 20 minutes to ensure that the Maulers left Wilcox as 4-1 victors.
Phair registered the win in the game, stopping 48-of-49 Hound shots while Kasaboski shouldered the loss, stopping just 21-of-25 Mauler attempts.
The win, the Maulers' sixth such result in the month of November, proved to the team that not only can they hold their own against the league's top teams, they could beat them as well.
It also showed the Maulers that they could play, and win, on the bigger ice surface in Wilcox; something they have been unable to do in recent years. "We knew on that big ice surface we seem to struggle and our game plan seems to fall apart," mentioned Cross, adding that the Maulers seemed to be cursed when they played on the larger ice surface. "What I liked the best is that our guys were finishing their checks in our own end which is usually where we fail there because of that big, wide ice surface it's difficult to finish your checks in that rink.
"It was a very rewarding win."
Next up
The Yorkton RawTec Maulers were in action last night (Tuesday) against the Regina Pat Canadians in their last home game of 2014, however results were unavailable at press time.
The next action for the Yorkton RawTec Maulers will be this weekend when they travel to Saskatoon to battle the Blazers for a pair of games. Saturday's game will begin at 7:15p.m. while Sunday's game will start at 5:00p.m. Both games are at the Harold Latrace Arena.
