With his arm in a sling, his skates packed away dry in his dressing room stall, and the season about to end, Brett Connolly was powerless to stop the bleeding.
The Prince George Cougars captain and star forward played just two shifts of the 2011 WHL playoffs before his shoulder got bent out of shape with a awkward check behind the net that sidelined him in the opening game of their series against the Kelowna Rockets.
The Rockets won that game 4-1, then reeled off three more victories to sweep the Cougars and move on to the second round. Even more painful for Connolly to watch was how his team twice blew two-goal leads in the third periods of Games 2 and 3. In the four games, they were outscored 11-1 in the final 20 minutes.
"It was tough sitting and it was even more tough watching the guys go out four-straight," said the 18-year-old Connolly. "But we have to take positives from the year, we definitely made strides this year.
"The core of our guys [Connolly, Greg Fraser, Brock Hirsche, Nick Buonassisi, Charles Inglis, Jaroslav Vlach, Taylor Makin, Daniel Gibb, Martin Marincin and Ty Rimmer] will be 19 next year and, no excuses, next year will definitely be our year."
For the fate of the franchise, let's hope Connolly's words ring true. The Cougars inconsistencies on the ice that led to a seventh-place 33-35-2-2 regular season resulted in too many empty seats at CN Centre. Even the buzz of the playoffs failed to stir the masses, leading to a disappointing two-game crowd count of 4,821 -- in a building that seats 5,995.
As a result of trades made to shore up their 2007 playoff run that took them into the third round, the core of Cougars' 1991-born talent pool took a hit and they paid the price with two straight non-playoff seasons.
The lack of playoff savvy came back to haunt the Cougars. Matched against a Rockets team that went 12 games deep last year, most of the Cougars had never played in the WHL postseason.
"We needed to be better and that's our focus already for next year that we play a playoff style of game earlier in the year," said Cougars head coach Dean Clark. "We finished [the regular season] winning four out of five to get our situation better for the playoffs, but we didn't play that great in the second half of the season.
"It's not that we didn't play hard, the guys emptied the tank every game of the series, it was just a matter of the mistakes we made that cost us and we made far too many."
Losing Connolly and his 46 goals this season, for almost the entire series was another nail in the Cats' coffin.
"He's our best player, and we needed him at his best for us to have success," Clark said.
Connolly was joined in the stands for Game 4 by injured forwards Inglis and Buonassisi. That took a collective 96 goals out of the Cats' lineup.
The Cougars' inability to keep pucks out of their own net proved their ultimate downfall. Outscored 22-13 in the series, that echoed the problems in the season that led to inflated goals-against averages for goalies Rimmer and James Priestner. The Cats didn't lack for scoring with 258 goals, fourth in the Western Conference, but allowed far too many (265 ), second-worst among the 10 Western teams.
"From our goaltenders out, that's something we have to address," said Clark. "You can't have success at this time of year if you don't have the ability to defend and you don't have solid goaltending. Our guys have to learn how to defend better as a group and have the same passion to backcheck that they do when they forecheck."
