With only two losses since the calendar turned into the New Year, the Cochrane Generals are at work preparing for their Heritage Junior Hockey League (HJHL) first round, best-of-three match up with the High River Flyers starting tonight at the Cochrane Arena.
The third place Generals finished the season with a record of 27-9-2 and went 3-0-1 against the Flyers who finished the season 12-21-5, good for sixth in the Southern Division. Cochrane finished with 15 more wins and 27 more points than High River while also outscoring them 16-9 in the four games they played this season. On top of that, Cochrane scored 79 more goals than the Flyers overall with their 186 tallies while also giving up 49 less goals than their first round opponents.
Sounds like a cake walk ... right? Not so fast, said Generals head coach Travis McMillan.
"We did have some difficulty early on in the season with them ... we have an overtime loss in our rink and thankfully beat them the remaining three games in the season, so our record shows we did well, but that's a feisty hockey team they have over there," McMillan said of the opposition.
"It comes down to a lot of things. If we play our game then we're all good but if teams tend to utilize some of their strengths and frustrate us like they can, we may get ourselves behind the eight ball. High River's best strength is their ability to break out of their zone. Going through game film, they're not the most skilled team but they are a very smart hockey team and are very well run. They present some challenges but if we play our game, I like our chances of taking a series win."
Since the Generals 2-1 overtime loss to High River on Dec. 1, the team has piled up win after win. Cochrane has gone 16-3 since that loss, which included a 12 game winning streak from Dec. 9 all the way until Jan. 27 before it was snapped by first place Coaldale on Feb. 1. While the record is nice going into the playoffs, McMillan said the team needs to wash that away and focus on the task at hand.
"It's always nice to have a good record going into to playoffs, but any coach will tell you that playoffs are a completely different beast. In the regular season it doesn't matter if you finished first, second, third or in the final playoff spot, there's always going to be hurdles that you don't expect," McMillan said.
"That's what playoffs are about and we need to be ready for it. I know for a fact that High River is pretty up for this series, I know that they want to play us and I have a sneaking suspicion that they'll try and pull a few tricks throughout the next two or three games and we'll see what happens."
With the long win streak, McMillan said it was almost important for the team to take in some adversity with the losses to Coaldale and Strathmore in order to get their minds focused heading into playoffs.
"I was in our office talking with our assistant and goaltending coach before the first game we played Coaldale which we won 5-4 in our rink. I looked at both of them and said 'I have a feeling we're going to lose this one' and both of them looked at me in disbelief and I said that I thought we needed to lose this hockey game, as weird as that may sound," McMillan said.
"The win streak was great and was fantastic for the boys, everyone was up and positive and it was a great stretch for our club. I don't doubt it came from the boys hard work and enjoyment of the sport but then we ended up losing to Coaldale the following game and I thought it was good for us to lose that. We needed a bit of a wake up and give us a bit of a sting to show us that we were human again. We were walking around like we were the kings of the earth as the 'hottest team in the HJHL' and all that stuff, but at the end of the day you can only do so much to make your team better."
"Sometimes guys get into bad habits, start getting lazy and you need that one loss to really sharpen up your hockey club, put us into check and opened some eyes. I'm happy where we're at right now."
Cochrane will play Game 1 tonight at the Cochrane Arena with puck drop going at 8 p.m. before heading to High River tomorrow for Game 2. If necessary, Game 3 will be back in Cochrane on Feb. 17 with puck drop taking place at 6 p.m.
