After a 5-4 loss to one of the weaker teams in the league on Sunday, midget AA North Central Bulls coach Gil Dubrule characterized his team’s season as erratic.
“We seem to have a Jekyll and Hyde team,” said Dubrule.
In late January, the Bulls played two strong teams, the St. Albert Crusaders and Northeast Panthers, to 4-4 ties. But when faced with the Vegreville Wranglers on Sunday, who sit last in the Edmonton Kenworth Division, the Bulls could not pull off a victory.
“The guys took a little while to find their legs,” said Dubrule of what allowed the Wranglers a foothold during the home game at the Athabasca Regional Multiplex.
He noted the Bulls were playing with two affiliate players and a third player who was recovering from the flu.
“We’re also playing with a short bench,” he said.
The Bulls have three suspended players at the moment and three injuries.
“We had to change our game plan. We used a system we haven’t before, and it took a little while to get going. Once they got the system, it was just a matter of focusing.”
And therein lay the issue, said Dubrule: particularly when they got quick leads, the Bulls would start to “daydream for a while,” letting Vegreville back into the game.
Vegreville opened the scoring, but within the first period, the Bulls had the game tied at 1-1. The Bulls inched ahead to 3-2; Vegreville came back. The Bulls got up to 4-3, but with less than three minutes remaining in the third, Vegreville scored twice in 10 seconds.
Despite the late-game slip-up, Dubrule acknowledged defencemen Ryan Kilar and Rylan Tkachuk were standouts for the Bulls.
With only two more weekends left of league play, Dubrule hopes the Bulls stabilize their performance. While there’s no risk of them not making playoffs (every team in the Northern Alberta Midget AA Hockey League makes the first round), Dubrule wants to see them level off.
“It’s just a matter of seeding, and then it’s a best of three first round,” said Dubrule of playoff structure.
What’s less clear, he said, is how the Bulls will respond to playoff pressure.
“We never know which group is going to show up,” he said of his Jekyll-Hyde team.
