The Westlock Senior Warriors may have outplayed the Morinville Kings in the opening round of the North Central Hockey League playoffs, but goals were hard to come by, which led to their ultimate defeat.
The Warriors dropped Game 4 of their series against the Kings 5-2 on Feb. 8 at the Rotary Spirit Centre, leaving them to swallow a 3-1 loss in the best-of-five series.
“It doesn’t feel great, but that’s the way it is. It was still a pretty good season, but I know we would have definitely liked to have gone a little further. It was still a good season, we were building well, compared to a couple of years ago and we’ve taken some pretty big steps in the last two years,” said head coach and captain Mike Ivey.
Ivey scored the Warriors first goal of the game to tie up the match 1-1 in the second period, but Morinville soon retook the lead and didn’t look back. Nathan Brown scored their second goal in the third, but the Kings had already pulled away and then added an empty netter to make it official.
“They got a couple power play goals in the second, when we went down to five-on-three. They scored them both on the same penalty so that was tough,” said Ivey.
“They’re a good team, they’re offensive, they can score goals, but honestly I think we outplayed them in every game of the series, but they scored more than us and it’s as simple as that.”
After a great start to the season, the Warriors finished the regular season with a 7-9 record, which was good enough to get into the playoffs as the No. 6 seed to face the Kings.
Ivey led the team with 12 goals and nine assists for 21 points on the season, while brother Scott Ivey was second with seven goals and 10 assists for 17 points.
Brett Bujold and Taylor Heck tied for third with 11 points and Jake Chizma and Nic Bourgeois each finished with seven points to wrap up the season.
Ivey praised the team for their hard work this season and pointed out the goaltending they got from Jordan Brand and Graeme Harrington throughout the season.
“We had very solid goaltending this year, which is nice. Hopefully, we’ll be getting both those guys back next season.
“It sounds like most of the guys will come back next year, so that’s good because it’s a really competitive league, it’s a really strong league, so we’ve got to keep trying to build and get better each year.”
Ivey also passed on thanks to the fans for their support as well as the sponsors and volunteers who made the season such a success.
