If games were decided by the shots on goal, the Jasper Wolves would have been laughing on Oct. 24. Unfortunately that’s not the case, and the Jasper Wolves weren’t laughing as they took a 12-2 loss to the Slake Lake Winter Hawks, despite out-shooting them 40-36.

Jasper got off to a rough start with players in the penalty box in the first period, leading the Hawks to three power-play goals in the first and a 5-2 lead by the intermission, something forward Rob Olsen said set them back from the start.

“They got three power play goals in the first period, which not only did it slow us down - it affects the scoreboard, but it really slowed our team down, trying to kill all of those penalties off.”

Penalties weren’t the only thing the Wolves had going against them. They also had to face the top two point leaders in the league, Brent Hill and Scott Sinclair. Hill leads the league with 18 points in three games. Ten of those points – five goals and five assists – came against the Wolves on Saturday, while Sinclair had three goals and six assists.

“They also have one player on that team that’s pretty amazing: Brent Hill…he definitely took advantage of us, we weren’t focusing on him like we should have. We knew before the game if we were to win the game we would have to stop him and also not take any penalties, because their powerplay is the best powerplay in the league by far,” Olson said.

The Wolves’ two goals were scored in the first period by Jeremey Kilpatrick and Adam Benningham.

The Wolves have a fairly young team this year, Olson said, and the effort is there, and it’s important to see that the guys really do want to win and are really working hard. The team will practice twice this week, and according to Olson, most of the players will be at both, so they will have a chance to work on some conditioning and work systems they need to put in place – powerplay, penalty kill, and break-outs, which some of the players haven’t worked together as team on much before.

The team also has about eight players from out of town that haven’t been able to make it to any games yet. Olson said they’ve got some new blood, but they don’t want to rely on the out of towners since they haven’t showed up yet.

They do have one player, said Olson, that was one of their better players last year that is due to be in Jasper on the weekend, along with a couple big defensemen.

This weekend the Wolves play a home and home series against the Hinton Heat, with a game in Jasper on Friday night and a game in Hinton on Saturday.
“It will be a lot rougher games this weekend. Slave Lake, they play a real finesse game, there’s not much hitting, they don’t play a real rough game. But Hinton is usually a lot more ugly of a game, so it might work better for us.”

Out of the Wolves’ 20-game schedule they play Hinton four times, so Olson said they will be big games.