The Estevan Bruins learned why it's better to give than to receive last week. A remarkable shift in less than 24 hours saw the Bruins go from flattening the Notre Dame Hounds 9-2 on Tuesday to getting slaughtered 9-0 by the Yorkton Terriers the next night.
The Jekyll and Hyde routine moved Estevan to 12-7 on the year, two points ahead of Weyburn in the battle for first place in the Sherwood Conference.
"You have a game like (Tuesday's win) and you're feeling really good about yourself and you feel like you can do nothing wrong, and you forget what you did to earn that," said Bruins head coach Keith Cassidy, who added that the difference between the two games "isn't personnel, it's the way we showed up mentally."
The only change to the lineup Wednesday was the absence of defenceman Dominic Perrault, who was attending to a personal matter. Jeff Bartel took his place.
After the loss to Yorkton, the Bruins got a week off leading into tonight's game against the Hounds in Carlyle. They used the time off to take a weekend trip to Grand Forks and watch the University of North Dakota take on St. Cloud State twice.
The Yorkton game began badly for the Bruins when a Terriers shot went off a skate and rolled slowly past goalie Steven Glass, barely crossing the goal line after hitting the post. Curtis Oliver got credit and would score another one 18 seconds later.
"We've gotta be mentally tough enough to battle through that and not let it affect us," Cassidy said. "Even from that point, I think we still had a reasonable effort. Our execution from that point on was pretty terrible."
Justin Lamontagne would give the Terriers a three-goal lead before the end of the period. The visitors continued to bring the pain, scoring four times in the second with markers from Brady Norrish, Keven Cann, Riley Paterson and Zak Majkowski to open up a 7-0 cushion after 40 minutes.
Ryon Sookro and Lamontagne, with his second of the night, rounded out the scoring in the third.
Cassidy didn't make any excuses for the poor showing.
"I'm through with saying these guys are a young team. I'm through with saying it's five games in six nights. It doesn't matter when we play, we gotta show up and play."
Tuesday's win was a much happier affair for the Spectra Place faithful, with the game summary following much the same path.
Matt Dochylo, Derek Whitehill and Cole Olson scored in a span of five minutes late in the first period to break open a relatively even game to that point. By the time the massacre was over, Calder Neufeld had his second hat trick in three games and Eric Baldwin, Taylor Reich and Austin Yano had also scored.
Winger Michael Hengen missed both games with a minor knee tweak. A pair of lineup changes from the previous weekend carried into the two home games. The big line of Neufeld, Olson and Dylan Smith was broken up, with Olson centring Reich and Tanner Froese, and the other two playing with Ryan Ostertag.
"Olson's been doing a tremendous job of hard work for those guys and he shoulders a lot of pressure that way. Putting him with Reich makes life a little bit easier for him, not in terms of he's not going to work as hard, but there's not as much stress for him," said Cassidy, who said the Reich-Olson-Froese line may be kept together.
Baldwin moved from defence to the wing for long stretches of both games.
"I like the energy he brings. He has a lot of fun up there. It doesn't matter what's going on, he comes off the ice with a smile on his face," said Cassidy. "Positionally, even though he hasn't skated in practice as a forward, he went out there and provided a lot of energy for us."
Following tonight's game, the Bruins are back home Friday to host the Melfort Mustangs before a trip to Melville on Saturday to visit the Millionaires.
