After winding up playing a late-night game in Saskatoon a little more than a week-and-a-half ago, the Springside Parkland Lions were faced with not only winning a home game this past Friday night, they needed to win it by at least six goals.
"Saskatoon lead the two game total point 6 to 0. We were down 6-0," said Lorrie Ulmer, manager of the Lions club.
"We just didn't have a good game in Saskatoon," recalled head coach, Herb Breitkreuz, who pointed to the larger drawing area which the big city has available to make the team come tryouts.
"They're a good team," he added.
In a 6-0 defeat, not a whole lot tends to go right for the team that loses, he acknowledged, but suggested that it is natural for a team that is brand new to the league.
"It was tough," he said of the loss to open the series. The game was a scheduled 9 p.m., game time but didn't start until 9:30 p.m., he said which made for an even longer roadtrip.
"They had ice time late. It threw them off."
The Parkland Lions currently play out of the Springside Arena, and have just completed their inaugural season there.
Breitkreuz said the experience that they can take with them is something that can only help them down the road.
"This is our first year in the league. The girls are battling hard. It's great experience."
The Lions are made up of girls between ages 11-13 and most of them are rookies.
"We're a very young group, Breitkreuz added.
In the second game played in Springside, Saskatoon opened the scoring at 18:15 but Tori-Lynn Lendvay evened the score from Jessica Lutz three minutes later.
The visiting Comets would score two more before the end of the period to complete the period leading by a score of 3-1.
Springside's Katelyn Breitkreuz cut the lead to one with an unassisted goal 1:02 into the second period, however Saskatoon would add two more to take a 5-1 lead.
A third Springside effort came off a pretty play by Jennifer Jones who tallied to make the score 5-3. Saskatoon would add a sixth goal in the third frame to seal a 6-3 win.
