The secret to the Flin Flon Bombers’ first win of this year’s national junior A hockey championship?
“It looked more like Bomber hockey,” Flin Flon head coach Mike Reagan told SportsCage in a phone interview Monday afternoon, after his team beat the Greater Sudbury Cubs 6-4 earlier in the day.
More specifically, Reagan said he liked what he felt was a more complete team effort.
The Bombers gave up the first goal of the game before forward Leo Seitz scored his first goal of the Centennial Cup to tie it less than 90 seconds later.
Exactly one minute after that, forward Connor Miller potted his own first of the event to give Flin Flon the lead, and the Bombers were just getting started.
A first period where they outshot Sudbury 12-5 concluded with back-to-back goals from forward Rhett Ewen – who likewise had yet to score at the tournament.
“We don’t rely on one or two guys, or one line,” Reagan said. “We need to have contributions through each line … We were heavy on pucks. I thought we defended well. Then we had a few hiccups in the second period that I didn’t like.
“Sitting on a 4-1 lead is not what you want to do.”
And sure enough, Sudbury rallied to tie the game. First, goals 30 seconds apart just after the five-minute mark of the second. Then a power play goal with Flin Flon’s Braydon Bruce – ironically, a former member of the major-junior Sudbury Wolves – in the penalty box for interference.
And then? A momentum killer to end all momentum killers when forward Reid Arberry, the club’s second-leading goal scorer this regular season, scored for Flin Flon with under one second to play in the frame.
“Huge for us,” said Reagan.
Third-period shots favoured the Bombers 11-10 and forward Landon Alexander scored an empty-netter in the final minute to seal the win. The goal also made Alexander the only Bombers goal scorer who’d scored in either of the team’s first two games.
“In Game 1 we outshoot our opponent 26-12 and lose 1-0. That shouldn’t happen very often but maybe the killer instinct that it takes to score goals at this time of year wasn’t quite there,” Reagan said, discussing the prospect of an emotional letdown among Flin Flon players between the time they won the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League championship and the start of nationals.
“I feel like we’re closer now to where we were the last time we played in the finals but there’s still room for us to get even closer to that level of playing standard we set.”
Part of the improvement Reagan would like to see is on special teams, where the power play has yet to score in 12 opportunities.
Still, at 1-0-2-0, Monday’s victory temporarily left the Bombers as one of four teams in their five-team pool still looking for a second win.
“It’s kind of a unique scenario I guess,” said Reagan. “There’s a lot of different scenarios that can still play out but I think that if things go according to, not ‘plan’ necessarily, but what we figure might happen, I think we could be in a pretty decent situation to control our own destiny.”
Whether the Bombers get that chance or not, their final game of the round-robin is scheduled for Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. against the Truro Bearcats.
