Sharks can’t solve Bears; swept in quarters

“All in all, I think we played pretty good. We just didn’t quite get it done.”

Berggren said nothing changed in terms of preparation after going down 2-0 and knowing they faced elimination.

“We basically had the same mindset [in game three] as we had in the other ones,” he said. “Be sound defensively and yet try to create as many offensive chances as we could and try to stay out of the penalty box. It’s sometimes tough because we want to play aggressive, especially against P.A., and then sometimes you kind of go over that line.

“P.A…pressures so hard and capitalizes on [their] chances,” he said.

After the sweep, the players and coaching staff were understandably not happy with the result. But because the team is so young, the message was also one of marked improvement.

Captain Jordan Kulbida and Dakota Peterson are graduating and moving on to university hockey, but everyone else is young enough to return.

The problem is, just because players are eligible, doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed to come back.

“I have no idea who’s going to come back and who’s not going to come back. A lot of those decisions will be made in the next few weeks,” Berggren said. “When I was talking to them [after game three], I did talk about…things like how much we improved from the beginning of the year to the end of the year and if our core group sticks together, how much better we can be next year and the year after. It’s important for us to have that core group come back and keep building on that.”

Berggen said he doesn’t even know if he’ll be brought back as head coach.

“I would like to stay on but it all depends on the situation,” he said. “I know that if this core group of players sticks together, they’re going to be really good one day and I’m hoping to be around when that happens.”

One thing the Sharks head coach noticed in the playoff series against Prince Albert that he believes they can work on moving forward was having more confidence.

Certain players really believed in the team’s ability to pull off the upset, but others did not.

“Mentally, everyone on the team needs to think or know that they can beat the top teams,” Berggren said. “I think sometimes in players’ minds, it creeps in that ‘oh, we haven’t beaten them yet this year.’ But there were some players on the team that really did believe that we could beat P.A. and they played like it. And there were a couple players that you could tell they didn’t think we could beat them and it showed in their play.

“It’s kind of a by-product of us losing some of those close games all year and if we would have come out on the winning side on some of those close games, maybe going into the playoffs, we would have had more players that believed we could win.”

One thing that was certainly a strength was goaltending.

Chantel Weller made 37 saves in game one, 40 saves in game two and 39 saves in game three. She’s just 14 years old.

Chloe Burt, who is also just 14 and split duties with Weller in the regular season, missed the final few games and the playoffs because of a concussion.

But Berggren had nothing but good things to say about both of them.

“Both of our goalies have been excellent all year,” he said. “It was tough for [Burt] to sit out but both goalies have been really really good all year and having both of them bantam-aged, it’s huge for them to come back if we want to have our program get better and better.”

With the season completed, next is spring camp, which will run on April 1 and 2.

Nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca

@NathanKanter11

by Nathan Kanter

Sharks can’t solve Bears; swept in quarters

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