It looked like a promising night for the Jasper Wolves and their fans on Saturday as their biggest game to date looked as though it could be the teams first win of the season after 40 minutes of play.

But a game is 60 minutes long, and the Hinton Heat had the Wolves on their heels, scoring four unanswered goals in the third period to take a 7-4 win.
In a showdown in front of the largest number of fans this season, the Wolves looked good early, taking a 4-1 lead, playing a physical game, despite a short bench.

But by the time the Wolves netted their fourth goal, fatigue had set in and costly penalties led to an onslaught of Hinton goals from which the Wolves couldn’t bounce back.

With six players going AWOL within hours of game time, and losing defenseman Adam Bennington in a fight in the first period, the Wolves were left with a short bench.

“It was a decent trade-off if you can say that,” said defenceman Jake Derksen, pointing out fighting isn’t something to promote. Although it got the team pumped up, they lost one of their top defensemen for the rest of the game.

“He fought a guy who was a good player on their team, and Adam didn’t necessarily go looking for it. He never looks for one.”

Derksen said his team had the upper hand in the first period and that some of the Hinton players are good friends with them and they could tell they weren’t having much fun. “It seemed like the Hinton team didn’t even want to be there,” he said. “You could tell that they weren’t having a fun time, down 4-1. And then they got two really quick goals to make it 4-3 in the second. And then as we got tired, and definitely got more penalties, then they got six unanswered goals or something ridiculous.”

Wolves’ Rob Olson said by the time Jasper had scored their fourth goal, the team had no energy left. “We scored our fourth goal, and it was like, well now how are we going to hold them off. And the bad part was that we got into some really bad penalty trouble after that.”

After the Wolves took a 4-1 lead in the second period, Hinton came within one goal as they headed into the third, leading to a total of six unanswered goals.

But Olson remained positive, saying during the last two games, they were the better team. Despite playing Onoway, the top team in the league, at home on Saturday (Nov. 21) they’ve had quite good success against them in the past.

“They’ve (Onoway) had a base core of people that have been there from the beginning where they’ve all played with each other for a long time and that’s one of the challenges that we are facing, we’re the exact opposite team as they are right now,” added Derksen, pointing out that the Wolves have a lot of new players that haven’t played together much.

“So we’re going to face the best team this weekend and we’re going to hopefully keep it close and really go for the win,” he said.

The next Jasper Wolves home game is Saturday, Nov. 21 at 8:30pm at the Activity Centre.