A late comeback came up just inches short Wednesday night, as the Lloydminster Bobcats fell 2-1 to the Grande Prairie Storm at the Centennial Civic Centre.
Under the direction of new Head Coach and General Manager, Nigel Dube, who was making his Cat’s Head Coaching debut, the Bobcat’s showed plenty of signs of promise and reasons for optimism.
“It’s been a whirlwind for almost a week now and their effort tonight, and care factor shows,” Dube said. “As a coach you look at that after one game and see that there are pieces there to work with and to build off.”
In a game that didn’t see a goal for the first 53 minutes of the contest, they came fast and furious towards the end.
Grande Prairie struck twice quickly, scoring goals just thirteen seconds apart. However, after a Lloydminster timeout, the Cats began to swing momentum in their favour once again.
On a late power-play, and with goalie Cale Elder pulled for the extra attacker, Ty Mosimann found a loose puck at the side of the goal and put home his first career AJHL goal to pull the Bobcats within one and just over a minute to play.
“With (Mosimann) it’s funny, we went through one on one meetings in the quick 36 hours and he wanted to score more goals, that’s what his personal goal is,” Dube said. “He worked for it. He got to those trenches, he deserved that one and good things are going to happen. He noticed that he does those little things and they are going to go a long way for him.”
Unfortunately for the Cats, despite a couple of glorious opportunities late, they were unable to beat Kaiden Lane a second time as the buzzer sounded to a 2-1 final.
“We’ll touch on things tomorrow in practice again,” said Dube. “It’s exciting though. Our guys had a positive outing for sixty minutes, and now to be able to turn around and keep that momentum going into Drayton on Friday is huge. We’ll continue that energy, we’ll continue to move in the right direction step by step, and that will start tomorrow at 9:30am.”
The Storm did outshoot the Bobcats in the contest 28-22, while the Cats went 1 for 4 with the man-advantage, and Grande Prairie going 0 for 2.
Next up for the Cats is a Friday night visit to Drayton Valley before travelling to Whitecourt on Saturday to battle the Wolverines.