Disappointing loss Sunday puts Cubs in 3-0 hole in South finals

By JAMES TUBB on March 14, 2023.

jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb

The Medicine Hat Cubs find themselves in familiar territory down 3-0 in the HJHL’s South finals series against the Okotoks Bisons.

A 5-2 Game 3 loss on Sunday at the Kinplex came 48 hours after the Cubs lost 6-3 on Friday in Okotoks, putting them in the daunting deficit with Game 4 set for tonight back at the Kinplex at 8:15.

Head coach Randy Wong didn’t mince words after Sunday’s loss, he’s disappointed in his team and their efforts in the do-or-die game.

“Quite frankly, I’m embarrassed for our organization, on how we played,” Wong said. “It’s not how I wanted to see this go down, I thought it was going to be a good series. I just didn’t think that we battled hard enough to make it a series and I fear what the outcome is going to be come Tuesday.”

The Cubs are in a similar situation as last season, falling behind 3-0 against Okotoks. They managed to win Games 4 and 5 before ultimately falling in Game 6 of that series. Wong says they thought they built a better team than last year and had more success against Okotoks heading into this series. What he didn’t see coming, is the lack of a positive attitude when facing adversity.

“It was a really a ‘me’ attitude, ‘I’m not going to blame myself, I’m going to blame the next guy, for the reason why we lost,’ and that’s contagious too,” Wong said. “I felt I heard a little bit of that today and that’s really frustrating and disappointing as a coach that that happened and crept in. When (instead), let’s face adversity head on and let’s be mad about it, let’s see what happens when we put our best foot forward, and we didn’t do that. We went the other way real quick and we blamed the guy beside us.”

Brady Mahar had a goal and an assist in Sunday’s loss with Jacob Milne scoring the Cubs’ other goal. Kellen Bojic made 30 saves with Medicine Hat outshot 35-34. Wong says he’ll make lineup changes heading into tonight and challenges not only his team, but his overage players who could be in their last game, to step up.

“We talked about playing for pride, playing for yourself, playing for your mom and dad, whatever it takes to get you motivated,” Wong said. “Some of these guys, it’s their last game, we’ve got to make some roster changes and so there’s some guys in the lineup today that won’t be in the lineup Tuesday. There’s four overage guys, and it’s their last bit of hockey. I’d much rather they go down and compete hard and I can accept losses. If you compete and play the right way and you lose the game, you hold your head high and walk away from the game knowing that you did your best.

“But when you don’t do that and you don’t work hard and you want to blame the next guy, if that’s your last taste of the game, and maybe your last junior hockey game, that’s really disappointing.”

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