KAMLOOPS — The Blazers season came to an end Monday night in a game six Royal flush.
A 4-1 loss to the Victoria Royals, who take the first round playoff series four games to two.
The disappointment of the end was tempered by a late season coming together and rally to get into the playoffs.
Leaving players and fans with a hunger for more, and looking forward to a promising future.
It was a magical three weeks that brought a Blazers nation together unlike anything seen in over two decades — since the Memorial Cup days of the 90s.
What looked at times like a dysfunctional family through 62 games, came together in game 63.
“We’re very proud of the maturity they’ve shown, the resiliency, but moreso the growth within the dressing room,” says head coach Serge Lajoie. “We’re at each other, we’re fighting like brothers and sisters — we’re family members, and at the end of the day we forgive each other, and we’re in this together.”
Thirteen games from game 63 on March 8 to game 75 April 1, that in the end left a group of mostly teenage hockey players emotionally spent.
“Maybe you saw a team that was just a little bit mentally tired,” says Lajoie. “The last 24 days — it’s one thing to go through the grind physically, it takes its toll on you mentally, and with such a young group. I think there were some mistakes there that we hadn’t seen earlier, and we needed to be sharp.”
“I’m going to try to not get emotional here,” said goaltender Dylan Ferguson. “The way these guys battled while I was out (injured) — I’ve never been so proud in my life. We had such a great group of guys and we all really bonded together at the end, and it’s going to be tough to say goodbye.”
“I was just thinking that this was going to be the last time I’ll be wearing the Blazers jersey,” says five-year veteran and team captain Jermaine Loewen. “The good times, the bad times — it was all just a flooding of emotion. That third period I was very emotional. It was hard to hold it together.”
“I felt like it wasn’t going to happen — a comeback this time around. And just to go out there, it was really hard.”
In game six of the playoffs shattered glass, not once, but twice in the same game, causing combined delays of 40 minutes — a nearly unsolveable goaltender, and an opponent that has also played through much adversity, with injuries to players and player suspensions.
“I don’t want to take anything away from Victoria,” says Serge Lajoie. “They put pressure on us and we weren’t able to execute as best as we could under that pressure.”
“Going back to the captains,” says Victoria head coach Dan Price, “they spoke with the team before the series. We knew that the series would have lots of ups and downs, as every series does. We just knew that we needed to stay very steady through it all, and regardless of what curve balls might come at us, we just wanted to try to stick with our process and our system. Kamloops played so well, they played so hard, they’re so well-coached, they’re deep, and it took everything we had to get through it.”
Now the bar has been raised. The torch passed on to young players to carry — a torch that has only flickered now and then for far too long.
“Every game that we got close to inching our way towards playoffs, the pressure got a little higher, so it was good experience for our players,” says Lajoie. “Then we got into playoffs, and every game was an opportunity to gain more experience. Our younger guys like Sopotyk, Pillar, Zary, Schmiemann — those young guys really gained a lot of experience. This was invaluable for us, and our growth as an organization.”
