Spotting teams a five-goal lead in the playoffs won’t win you many games.
The Airdrie Thunder found that out in game one of its opening round best-of-five playoff series and will now return home down 1-0, after dropping a 7-5 road decision to the Three Hills Thrashers, Feb. 22.
Travis Wallan scored three times, including two on the power play, while Brandon Esposito added another power play goal and Kelly Duke scored shorthanded. Kristian Petit had four helpers and Jeff Gardner had the loss in net for the Thunder, who will try to regroup for game two in Airdrie on Feb. 24; 7:45 pm. at the Ron Ebbesen Arena.
“When you look at the amount of time we actually played hockey last night – 40 minutes, which you can’t afford to do in a playoff game, we beat them 5-0 – if you want to look at it that way,” said Thunder head coach Gareth Barley.
“So there are a lot of positives from the game. We fought our way back and faced adversity. But the mental mistakes ended up costing us.”
The Thrashers opened up a 5-0 lead midway through the second, before Airdrie came back to tie the game in the third. But the Thunder allowed two more late goals and will now have to win three of the next four games to advance.
“We have a young team, but they need to realize they are a talented team,” Barley said. “We’ll be making some personnel changes in the lineup and have to see how some injuries are going to unfold – we may have lost Andrew Bergmann for the season due to an injury. We are down 1-0, but we’re playing in our home rink and the team has played a lot better at home than on the road this season. (Game two) is definitely a must-win game for us.”
Game three will go Feb. 25 in Three Hills. If necessary, game four will take place in Airdrie at 1:15 p.m. on Feb. 27 and game five would be in Three Hills at 8 p.m. on Feb. 28.
