York Lions knocked out of playoffs

Victoria Alarcon
Sports & Health editor
If there was any game York needed to win, it was this one. Didn’t matter which opponent, didn’t matter which arena – all that mattered was the score.
And in this case, York failed to overtake the Laurier Golden Hawks, which left the Lions with nothing but a disappointing 4-2 loss, eliminating them from the men’s hockey playoffs this year.

“I think we deserved a better fate. We put ourselves in the hole,” said York Lions head coach Jim Wells, who was disappointed with the end result. “I thought we outplayed them in the first. In fact, we outshot them in the first and we’re down 3-0, and those were mental mistakes we made and we were a little tired from last night. But I really think we deserved a better fate.”
But the Lions fate was determined by a lot of missed passes and penalty troubles in the first period – which gave the Golden Hawks a 3-0 lead in the match – and the fact there wasn’t  enough time for the Lions to catch up.
This was that one match where the Lions needed to be alive and ready from the second the puck dropped, and it just didn’t register in the players’ heads to come out strong.
The Lions, however, would get several wake-up calls, the first one in the first two minutes of the match; Laurier player Ryan Bernardi managed a quick goal from the front of the net after a corner pass from his teammate. But if that wasn’t enough to stir the York players, then the two consecutive goals made by Jordan Bonneville and Mitchell Good – the Lions  looked like a joke when Good scored not even 15 seconds after his teammate – should have been.
“We left it to the last minute to try and win the game. We played another pretty good game, but it was almost like we played 55 minutes of a 60-minute game,” said hockey captain Jesse Messier who finished with one assist in the game. “We fell asleep for about five minutes in the first with penalty trouble and they buried three quick ones and from there it’s tough to climb back from a 3-0 deficit, especially at that point in the game.”
It wouldn’t be until much later in the match that the Lions would bring on the energy they needed to outplay their tough opponent, shooting pucks into the net to close the gap to 3-2, but just like the whole season, it was a little too late.
The penalty trouble that followed the Lions throughout wasn’t helpful at all, with York piling up 24 minutes in the box because of infractions; this did nothing but give Laurier the upper hand.
“It’s an emotional game out there, we were fighting tooth and nail for that last playoff spot,” said Messier. “Guys are going out there, throwing their body, doing whatever they can to make a difference. There is no holding back especially in the position we were in.”
The season for the Lions has been an uninspiring performance to say the least, with five-game losing streaks and 8-0 losses. It’s no surprise the Lions leave this season empty-handed.
“Throughout the year we’ve been inconsistent. We’d have a great game against a good team and we’ll win, and then we’ll play a bit of a weaker team and we’ll come out flat and we’ll lose,” said rookie forward Adam Stuart after the game. “Good teams don’t lose to weaker teams, and right now we’re just too inconsistent.”
The only place the Lions can go from here is looking to next year. And even then it’ll still be up in the air.