LAC LA BICHE - The Portage College Voyageurs remain winless through seven games of the ACAC regular season after a Saturday night, home-ice loss to the visiting Augustana Vikings.
The 4-2 decision keeps the Voyageurs in last place of the seven-team Alberta Colleges Athletics Conference hockey standings, and bumped the Vikings into fifth place.
Going into the weekend game — the only one of what was supposed to be a two-game, home and home stand for the teams that was shortened due to COVID isolation protocols on the Vikings' bench — the Augustana squad was only two points ahead of the Voyageurs. The two points had come from the Vikings only win of their season to that point ... a 4-3 victory over the Voyageurs in November.
Saturday's game at the Bold Center saw the Voyageurs striking first, the Vikings equalizing, then going ahead and hold a one-goal lead through the second period. The Voyageurs tied it up early in the final frame. But a penalty — one of only two for the Voyageurs in the game — resulted in a power play goal for the Vikings. An empty-netter late in the game put it out of reach for Portage.
There are eight regular season games remaining for the Voyageurs. Only the top six teams in the standings will make playoffs.
'Two steps backward'
In comments on the Portage College's online game summary, Voyageurs' head coach Kevin McClelland expressed his frustration with the lost opportunity to move ahead in the standings.
"We took two steps backwards tonight as far as I'm concerned ... That was probably our worst game of the year," he said following the final whistle. "We had not a lot of jump and didn't have a lot of emotion."
One area that emotion and jump is noticeably missing, he said, is on the man-advantage.
"Our powerplay is killing us. I mean we've had opportunities to win three or four games right now but our powerplay does nothing. And in a 2-2 hockey game where we have the majority of the powerplays and then they get a call it takes them 10 seconds to get the game winning goal…Our powerplay needs to step up."
The team's next chance to step up the standings is this coming weekend against the Briercrest Clippers. The Saskatchewan-based team currently sits in sixth place of the ACAC standings, three points ahead of the Voyageurs. The January 28 and 29 games in Caranport will be the first meeting of the two teams in the regular season. A four-point weekend would put the Voyageurs into sixth place in the league standings.
The Voyageurs beat Briercrest in two pre-season exhibition games in October.
