The Nipawin Hawks battled the Klippers Friday in Kindersley. (Clark Stork/northeastNOW Staff)

By Clark Stork

Third period thud

Sluggish final frame costs Hawks again

Feb 10, 2024 | 11:01 AM

Two early third period Klippers’ goals were the Hawks’ demise Friday as Nipawin fell 4-3 in Kindersley in Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League (SJHL) play.

As the Hawks battle for their postseason lives with 13 games remaining in the regular season for the team, Friday’s result was the Hawks’ seventh loss of the campaign when tied after the first two periods, Nipawin has also blown six third period leads, with three of those being regulation losses. Head Coach Tad Kozun admits the season would be playing out differently without those statistics.

“I thought it was much better tonight,” he said on the postgame show on 750 Beach Radio after Nipawin’s eighth straight loss. “We had that five minute lapse again; we’ve talked about it a lot this year. If you have a five minute lapse, you can’t leave guys wide open in the slot and be puck watching because it’s in the back of the net.”

Chase Visser opened the scoring in the first period giving the Hawks a 1-0 lead, the tally was the 20-year-olds eighth of the year and Nipawin’s first goal in over two games. Kindersley tied the game before the first expired, Evan Forrest restored the Hawks’ lead in the second period, but again Kindersley responded to knot the score at 2-2.

Going into the third deadlocked, the Klippers scored a pair of goals to take a 4-2 lead just over three minutes into the final frame and the Hawks couldn’t catch up. Dallyn Peekeekoot scored his second of the year late to cut the lead to one, but the Hawks couldn’t find the equalizer. Peekeekoot was able to capitalize after a strong Hawks’ forecheck, as were the other two tallies, but Kozun said that type of gameplan wasn’t consistent enough to get the win.

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“We’ve always wanted to be a fast team where we want to play north and south. You look at all our goals everything was going north and south and getting pucks to the net,” he added.

With the eight game slump, the Hawks have slid to ninth in the standings, but is still just point back of the final seed.

The Hawks stayed in Kindersley and will take on the Klippers for the fifth time this season. Kozun said the team needs to reset and refocus with the goal of heading home in eighth place.

“You are never happy after a loss like this, you just have to get that fire burning even more for tomorrow. Everything is getting magnified right now, there is no secret about it. We have to quit talking about it and put everything on the line,” he concluded.

Faceoff is 7:15 p.m., the pregame show on 750 Beach Radio starts at 7:15 p.m.

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clark.stork@pattisonmedia.com

On X: @ClarkStork