The Yorkton RawTec Maulers seemed to be in the driver鈥檚 seat of their SMAAAHL first round playoff series against the Notre Dame Hounds up two-games-to-none.
After wins of 3-2 in Game One and 4-3 in Game Two, all the Maulers had to do was win one of their final three games to wrap up the series.
Instead, the RawTec Maulers faltered while their opponents flourished, dropping Game Three in Notre Dame 5-1 and Game Four in Yorkton 7-3 to set up a fifth and final game to determine which team would move on and who would go home.
Game Five
With their Best of Five SMAAAHL quarterfinal series with the Notre Dame Hounds knotted up at two games apiece, the Yorkton RawTec Maulers needed a win in Game Five in order to advance to the league semi-finals.
Things started off well in Notre Dame for the Maulers, as rookie Carson Miller opened the scoring 4:47 into the game when he put his fifth goal of the postseason behind Notre Dame net minder Reid Cooper for a 1-0 Yorkton lead.
The Mauler lead proved to be very short lived however, as just 48 seconds after the Miller marker the Hounds pulled even when Dominic Schmiemann beat Jordan Schmuland to make it 1-1.
A CJ Walker goal early in the second period gave the host Hounds a 2-1 lead; a lead that would last until the final three minutes of the frame when Brett Kemp 鈥� with Loeden Schaufler in the penalty box for boarding 鈥� beat Cooper to knot things up at two heading into the final period.
A seeing eye shot by Artem Kusov early in the third period eluded Schmuland to the glove side to give the Hounds back the lead at 3-2 with 14:49 remaining in the game.
A pair of empty net goals 鈥� one by Burke Johnstone and the other by Thomas Casey 鈥� put the Hounds up 5-2 very late in the game despite the Maulers dominating the flow of play for the final 15 minutes to eliminate the RawTec Maulers from the SMAAAHL playoffs. 鈥淭hey got the bounces tonight and they worked hard,鈥� said Mauler head coach Graham Garrett on the effort of the Notre Dame Hounds. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e a good hockey team and this fifth game was the way that all five games should have been played, instead of the gong show that we had in some of the games.鈥�
Garrett also mentioned that home ice advantage came into play in the series, and that had the Maulers pulled out an extra couple of wins in the regular season things may have been different. 鈥淲e knew home ice advantage would be huge in the first round and as the year went on we had some issues with some certain situations that we were struggling to overcome and in the end some of those maybe cost us home ice advantage in the first round and ultimately the series.鈥�
Now Garrett and the Maulers will focus on the offseason and say goodbye to four veterans that are graduating from the team: Kylan Shea, Taylor Elmy, Damian Bentz and Drayson Skulmoski 鈥� the latter two having spent their entire midget careers as members of the Mauler organization. 鈥淲e have four forwards that we鈥檙e graduating. Drayson Skulmoski and Damian Bentz spent three years playing here. They played their guts out here tonight and really wanted it. No one wants to go three years without winning a playoff series in midget 鈥楢AA鈥� and Bentz struggled last year but came back with a great regular season this year,鈥� said Garret, continuing, 鈥淯nfortunately he was a target here in the playoffs and didn鈥檛 get to play all five games here but played his guts out here tonight, and when you look at Kylan Shea and Taylor Elmy, those guys really took on a role in the defensive part of the game in the second half of the season, especially in penalty killing and were phenomenal for us here at the end of the season and into the playoffs.鈥�
Overall, the 2015/16 RawTec Maulers put together one of the strongest regular seasons in recent memory, posting a record of 25-14-5 and scoring 166 goals, good enough for second overall in the 12-team SMAAAHL.
