B.C. has earned the right to play for fifth place tonight in the Canada Winter Games men's hockey tournament but it took a determined comeback Friday afternoon for the host team to grab that straw.
Down 3-1 in the third period against New Brunswick in their playoff game at Kin 2, B.C. scored three goals to lock up a 5-3 win. Brett Stapley tied it at 5:59, Justin Almeida provided the go-ahead goal 34 seconds later, and Jordan Robinson ended the suspense with an empty-netter.
"The outcome was right but the process has sort of been our Achilles heel the whole way along," said B.C. head coach Jim Dinwoodie. "We'll have 10 minutes where we're as good as any team in this tournament and then we'll lose focus and it goes in our net and it happened again today. For whatever reason, the team has great focus and very poor focus at the same time. We've had to claw back on everybody."
All of New Brunswick's offence came in the second period. Michael Joseph of New Brunswick scored on a power play to wipe out the lead James Malm had given the hosts. B.C. answered two minutes later with a goal from Brendan Semchuk but Christopher Ferron and Ethan Crossman both put pucks past B.C. goalie Jordan Hollett heading into the second intermission.
Shots ended up 36-27 in B.C.'s favour.
B.C. will play Nova Scotia tonight at 7:30 at Kin 2. B.C.'s medal hopes were shattered Thursday in a 6-3 quarterfinal loss to Quebec.
"It's easy to start second-guessing but I know we picked the right players for this team," said Dinwoodie.
"It was just a sequence of events that hurt us. We lost two critical energy guys in the first shift of the first game (Matt Cullen and Robinson went down with injuries) and those are guys we needed to play a very specific way who are complementary on a specific line and that had a long-lasting effect."
