REGINA – The Acadie-Bathurst Titan punched their ticket to at least the semifinal of the Mastercard Memorial Cup with an 8-6 victory over the Regina Pats on Sunday night.
It wasn’t pretty.
After allowing four unanswered goals in the third period and needing an empty-netter in the final second to secure the victory, the Titan were hardly pleased with the way things unfolded.
“We played a good 40 minutes at the start, but in the third we didn’t play at all,” said Titan captain Jeffrey Truchon-Viel, who had two goals and a helper. “We stopped playing.
“They took care of their chances and we gave up pretty much. And we talked about it after the second that we cannot stop working and that’s what we did.”
The Titan had skated circles around the tournament hosts for the better part of two periods. They even went up 7-2 less than two minutes into the third.
That’s when the wheels started to wobble.
Cameron Hebig netted his second of the game before Nick Henry, Josh Mahura and Matt Bradley beat goaltender Evan Fitzpatrick. The last goal came with 1:57 on the clock.
The Titan are just thankful the wheels didn’t come right off.
“Being 2-0 after two games is a really good scenario for us,” coach Mario Pouliot said. “When we look at the game, honestly, it was a good show for the fans. It’s a learning process. We lost our focus, our composure.”
As shaken as the Titan were by their near collapse, at least they escaped with the win.
For what seemed like a valiant comeback from the home side, Pats coach-GM John Paddock wasn’t buying it.
“The third period disguised a whole bunch of crap. I don’t really have anything to say about the third period,” he said. “We didn’t do anything.”
Goaltending was perhaps the biggest issue for the Pats.
Max Paddock – Paddock’s nephew – followed up a superb performance in the tournament opener by allowing at least three soft goals on Sunday. Two of them came shortly after Hebig opened the scoring 13 seconds in.
Noah Dobson, Ethan Crossman and Liam Murphy scored in a span of 81 seconds, turning a 1-0 deficit into a 3-1 advantage 5:52 into the game.
The latter two tallies saw Crossman’s fluttering wrist shot allude Max’s blocker and Murphy capitalize on a rebound from an acute angle.
Then came the cringe-worthy one.
With the Pats on a power play, Max went to play the puck and pushed it off the side of the net. The puck got stuck in the inside of his right stake. He essentially skated it into the crease where Truchon-Viel tapped it in. That made it 6-2 at 13:11 of the second, putting the Pats in a big hole.
Max allowed six goals on 32 shots.
“We’re not gonna point fingers,” Bradley said. “We left him out to dry a couple times.”
Paddock said his plan heading into the opener was to pull his nephew in favour of veteran Ryan Kubic at the first sign of trouble. After all, Max missed the team’s entire first-round, seven-game series against Swift Current because of a groin injury.
But Paddock said he didn’t consider yanking Max until the Truchon-Viel’s bizarre short-handed goal. With the Pats not playing well, he said it would have been unfair to Kubic to not wait until the third.
Kubic then let in a stinker on the first shot he faced 1:39 into the third from Crossman. What looked like a meaningless goal wound up being the winner. Kubic only saw four shots.
Combine the two netminding performances and the Pats coach has a difficult decision to make for the team’s round-robin finale Wednesday against the Broncos. And although Paddock said he wasn’t concerned about Max’s mental state, he wasn’t about to name a starter.
“I can’t change all the players,” he said in jest.
Jared Legien had the other Regina goal, scored in the second period. Despite three points from Hebig and four assists from captain Sam Steel, it wasn’t enough.
Adjectives for their play ranged from “unacceptable” (from Hebig) to “disappointing” (Mahura).
Of course, it was Paddock who provided the harshest criticism.
“We didn’t have a player that outplayed a player he was playing against,” he said.
Samuel Asselin was the other Titan player to beat the Max. Murphy equalled the three points Truchon-Viel registered. And Dobson potted the empty-netter as part of a two-goal, two-assist night for the potential top-10 pick in the 2018 NHL Draft.
Those types of offensive outputs should have been enough to cruise to victory. Instead, the Titan required a white-knuckle finish to close the deal.
“We kind of fell asleep in the third there, but a win’s a win in this tournament,” Dobson said. “We said at the start of the tournament to be 2-0 after the first two games, we’d take it.
“We’re going to learn from our third period and get better for our game Tuesday.”
NOTES: Humboldt Broncos goalie Jacob Wassermann was recognized during a stoppage in play. The 18-year-old played two games for the Pats this season.
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