SUMMERSIDE, P.E.I. — Throughout the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League regular season, the Flin Flon Bombers proved to be an absolute terror on the power play, scoring nearly half as many more goals than their opponents on the man advantage.
On Friday morning at the Centennial Cup national junior A hockey championship, a rare power outage in that aspect of the game for the Bombers proved to be a key factor in the outcome.
Facing the Quebec champion College Francais de Longueuil in their opening contest of the 10-team tournament, the Bombers would go scoreless on six power play chances and go on to drop a 1-0 decision.
Flin Flon had scored at a 24.7 per cent clip on the man advantage during the regular season, racking up 70 goals across 56 games in the process. With both teams on Friday struggling to stay out of the penalty box, that should have worked in the Bombers favour.
They’d have four power plays in the first period and outshoot Quebec 10-5, eventually finishing 0-for-6 on the man advantage.
The game remained scoreless until the 13:39 mark of the second period, when Samuel Beaulieu tipped home a shot from Gabriel Provencher, with the power play goal eventually standing as the game winner.
Flin Flon poured on the pressure in the third period and outshot Quebec 10-2 in the process but couldn’t find the back of the net. As a result, Longueuil’s Mathis Lacroix-Goulet finished with a 26-shot shutout and the victory in their Centennial Cup opener.
Charlie Tritt was far less busy in Flin Flon’s net, facing only 12 shots total.
Longueuil ended up going 1-for-5 on the man advantage.
The Bombers will look to regain their winning ways on Saturday when they take on Ontario’s Toronto Patriots, with puck drop at 1 p.m. They continue their round robin Monday at 9 a.m. against Northern Ontario’s Greater Sudbury Cubs and wrap up the preliminary round at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday against the Truro Bearcats.
The top three teams from each pool advance to the semifinals on Saturday, May 16, followed by the championship game on Sunday, May 17.
