Broncos forward Cage Newans led the green and gold offensively this year, ending the regular season eighth overall in the league and scored nine of the Broncos' 35 playoff goals. (Submitted photo/Becky Zimmer)

By Becky Zimmer

End of the line

Barney reflects on strong performance as game five loss ends season for Broncos

Apr 12, 2023 | 8:00 AM

The final buzzer has sounded on the 2022/2023 season for the Humboldt Broncos and head coach, Scott Barney, wouldn’t change a thing.

The green and gold played hard all the way to their game-five loss against the Flin Flon Bombers, Barney told northeastNOW.

“Each game we had opportunities to score, maybe we just didn’t. I’m proud of each and every guy on our team and congrats to the Flin Flon Bombers for moving on.”

After a successful round one against the Nipawin Hawks, the green and gold met up with the Flin Flon Bombers for round two last week but could not gain the advantage over a strong offence and the brick wall that is Bombers’ goalie, Harmon Laser-Hume.

With the home-ice advantage, the Broncos started the series at home in front of a loud and proud Humboldt fan base.

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It would not be enough to kick start the Broncos as they headed back to Flin Flon for games three and four down by two games after 3-4 and 2-5 losses.

Game three came with some controversy as the lone Broncos goal was disallowed by the officials and one puck past Broncos goalie, Benjamin Motew, was enough for the Bombers to take the win.

Game four saw a bit more success from the Broncos in their 4-1 win to keep the series alive and bring the series back to the Elgar Petersen Arena.

Xavier Roy’s goal in the third period for the Broncos put them down only by a single goal before the Bombers widened the gap a few minutes later to a two-goal lead in the dying minutes of game five. That would be as close as the Broncos would come to extend the series to game six but it wouldn’t be enough.

However, they do close out another successful season in second place in the SJHL and second in the Global Ag Risk Solutions division having to compete against the runaway league leaders, the Battlefords North Stars.

Forwards Cage Newans and Lucas Ceccarelli also broke the league’s top 20 skater leaderboard with 57 and 55 points respectively while Daylan Weigel, Noah Barlage, and Carsten Kayter were in the top 20 leaderboard for points by a defenceman.

Being a rookie and one of the youngest players on the team, this has been no small feat for Kayter but Barney said his ‘06 players, including forward Matthew Van Blaricom, have been good for them this year, two examples of great drafting decisions by their staff.

During the regular season, their special teams were the best in the league with a 26.4 per cent success rate on the power play and an 84.8 per cent success rate on the penalty kill.

Barney chalks this up to get as many players involved on special teams as possible while continuing to make that a big part of their practice sessions.

“It’s also the players buying into what we’re showing and we’re drawing, we’re showing them how we want things done and that’s a lot of the success there is just that extra practice and doing it repeatedly.”

Meanwhile, Benjamin Motew finished off his first season with the green and gold with a 0.906 save percentage in his 27 regular season games, followed by a 0.934 save percentage in seven playoff games.

With the season over, this is now time to look to the future with the Broncos’ spring camp coming up this weekend. Four teams of each ‘07-’08 born players and ‘04-’07 born players will be showing the coaching staff what they got, especially those ‘04-’07 who are looking for roster spots for the season, Barney said.

And there will be some openings they will need to fill since they have seven graduating players and a few more that have already made post-secondary plans. With the awards banquet on Friday, Barney knows they will be saying goodbye to a lot of familiar faces that have put a lot of minutes into the team.

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becky.zimmer@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @bex_zim