By Colin Budd
In many ways the Saskatchewan AAA senior provincial final went about how the Lloydminster Border Kings had thought it would.
The team put on the hard hats and with some gritty effort outplayed the first time AAA squad from Paradise Hill for the most part, yet with John Haggis in goal, the Kings knew goal scoring would be at a premium. And it was, but they managed to generate enough offence to grind out a four-game win.
“We aren’t necessarily blessed with a whole lot of natural goal scoring ability, but we are a team that will come hard for three periods straight and we are going to have to work hard for our goals and we definitely had to,” said Staniforth.
“Johnny Haggis definitely gave them an opportunity to steal a game, which he did – and maybe another one – but I would say in a nutshell, it’s just one of those things where it’s tough to throw a team together at a competitive level against a team that’s been together for the year and has better continuity and maybe a little better conditioning.”
It won’t get any easier for the Border Kings from here on in as the Manitoba champs, Southeast Prairie Thunder, went all the way to the Allan Cup final last year before falling to Bentley. To that end, Staniforth says they are going to have to cut down on some mistakes they made against the Hawks.
“We definitely at times made some poor decisions with the puck and when we did they scored on us,” said Staniforth.
“So we’re going to have to find ways to minimize silly mistakes by coughing the puck up needlessly.”
That said, there are a lot of positives that were gained from the series as far as guys buying in to what the coaching staff has laid out.
“I think as far as mindset and effort and work ethic is concerned we’re definitely where we need to be,” said Staniforth. “We just to have to minimize the mistakes and that’s really the name of the game whether it’s senior AAA or pro hockey.”
The Border Kings are planning on focussing on special teams in the next eight days leading up to the Southeast series.
The best-of-five series gets underway Friday, March 27 in Lloyd.