For the Steelers, the road to provincials leads to Wetaskiwin.
Despite the Midget 1 Steelers solid 4-0 victory against the Athabasca Hawks in the second game of a two-game, total-points provincial series Feb. 15, head coach Alan Measures says he doesn’t think his team is playing at the level it is capable of.
“As long as we’re getting the wins, especially during provincials, that’s a good thing and hopefully this is just one of those lulls, a February-specific kind of thing that we’re going through. We played maybe 15 good minutes in the first period and should have scored more but it has been an issue we’ve had all season,” Measures said, noting that he is impressed with the effort of his players.
“At the beginning of the year, we were blowing everyone we faced out of the water and that’s great. This group has been a lot of fun to coach and I’m proud of them, but I don’t think that our game was at the level that I wanted us to be playing at.”
We have had some guys out with illness and others were missing for this series of games but they all worked really hard. I didn’t have a lot of interaction with these kids before this season but I’m glad that I’m coaching again because this is something that I missed,” he said.
Ten minutes into the first period, Steelers forward Kurtis Properzi scored first for Barrhead and five minutes later, teammate Jeremy Devries, assisted by Robert Geis and Justin Haltiner, followed suit, bringing the total to 2-0.
Barely sixty seconds into the second period, Devries scored on a breakaway, assisted by teammates Sheldon Dewsnap and Haltiner, widening the gap to 3-0.
Unable to rally a defense, the Hawks scrambled for possession of the Barrhead-controlled puck and failed to defeat Landon Petiot’s unassisted goal in the last minute of the period, resulting in a final tally of 4-0.
“We are done for qualifiers this year and we’re on our way. Between now and then, we’re just going to concentrate on the league. Going to provincials and winning, we’ve accomplished one third of the three goals we set out to this year. We’ll take care of the league next,” Measures said.
The Barrhead Steelers face Wetaskiwin on March 22.
