It was a different opponent, a different night, but the same result: a loss.
This time the Yorkton Harvest fell 4-2 to the visiting Tisdale Trojans on Thursday night at the Farrell Agencies Arena thanks in large part to their old nemesis: Penalties. Eleven to be exact.
The loss continues the downward trend that the Harvest have been on. Since October 27 the Harvest are just 2-10-3-1, a far cry from their torrid start when they went 7-2-1-1 in their first 11 games of the season.
The visitors opened the scoring midway through the first period when, with Corwin Stevely in the penalty box for boarding, Wyatt Hinson's shot eluded Carson Bogdan to make it 1-0 for Tisdale.
The Trojans powerplay struck once more in the opening frame, this time off the stick of the SMAAAHL's leading scorer Rylan Freed to make it 2-0 for Tisdale after 20 minutes of play.
The Harvest cut the Tisdale lead in half with 10:50 to go in the second period when Stevely made amends for his earlier penalty. The Harvest captain slipped his eighth of the season past Trojans goalie Brandon Holtby to make it 2-1 Tisdale but the visitors responded just over two minutes later when Drew Warkentine took the Freed pass and snapped the puck past Bogdan for a 3-1 lead.
The Harvest powerplay then found the scoresheet as Korwin Shewchuk made it 3-2 with his fifth goal of the season to cut the Trojan lead to just one at 3-2 after two periods.
However, 3-2 is the closest that Yorkton would get as Tisdale added one more powerplay goal to give the Harvest a 4-2 home ice loss to close out 2013.
A loss that Harvest head coach Dan Cross blames not on the referees, but on his team's discipline. "We can cry all we want about bad calls but you don't have the most penalties in the league just because you get bad reffing every time. It might happen sometimes, there might be a bad call game to game but not all year long. That's our biggest issue right now, our penalties and our discipline."
"When you're giving up goal after goal after goal on the powerplay it kills and drains your team. It just deflates you. I don't know. There's not really much to say other than we've got to smarten that up. We're trying to address it the best we can and obviously it's not working."
Next action
The next action for the Yorkton Harvest will be after the Christmas Break when they take to the road to visit the Saskatoon Blazers on Saturday, January 11 and Sunday, January 12. The next home action for the Harvest will be Wednesday, January 15 when they host the league leading Notre Dame Argos at the Farrell Agencies Arena at 8:00p.m.
