‘It’s one of the worst feelings in the world’: Rockets sweep Blazers out of playoffs in Round 1

His reward came on the power play in the first period on Wednesday. J.P. Hurlbert’s shot attempt was foiled, but the puck trickled to Lafreniere, who hammered home his first of the post-season.

“Our first period was terrific,” Blazers’ head coach Shaun Clouston said. “We weren’t able to sustain that.”

Hurlbert became physically involved after the goal, throwing his weight around against 6-foot-2 Rockets’ defenceman Nate Corbet, the crowd voicing its appreciation for truculence.

The push for a second goal ratcheted up and Kamloops — which outshot Kelowna 17-8 in the opening frame — peppered Boettiger, but could not find twine.

When Corbet took an interference penalty, the home team was poised to get the two-goal cushion it deserved, but the power play sputtered.

To make matters worse for the Blazers, their series nemeses were lurking.

Vojtech Cihar was there to poke home a loose rebound, with assists to Tij Iginla and Keith McInnis.

Cihar and Iginla combined for eight points in a 7-4 win on Tuesday and shredded the Blazers in the series, tallying 10 points each in four games.

“They’re a great team,” Blazers’ graduating forward Jordan Keller said. “Their top line showed up every night. We did our best to shut them down, but it wasn’t enough.”

The Blazers dominated the first stanza and could have been up a few goals, but reached the first intermission in a 1-1 tie.

“Those are the things, unfortunately, that are deflating,” Clouston said. “As much as you want to just play the right way regardless of the score … that’s not easy. I think some guys found it really challenging.”

Added Michael: “I thought the mood in the room was still good. We knew we played a good period and we knew that we were on our game.”

With Hurlbert in the box for holding, Kelowna took its first lead of the game on the power play.

Hayden Paupanekis crawled off the wall and zipped a shot high over Edmonstone’s right shoulder at 4:06 of the second period, the Montreal Canadiens prospect tallying his first of the post-season.

Groans were audible from the announced crowd of 3,428 and air began to seep from the building.

“The second period wasn’t really us,” Michael said. “We had stretches throughout the whole series where we were on our game, but we never put a full 60 together. When you can’t do that, you’re going to end up on the wrong side of things.”

Dawson Gerwing intensified the vacuum of hope from Sandman Centre, driving to the net to swipe in a loose puck at 16:30, shortly after the Rockets forced a turnover just inside the Blazers’ blue line.

“I think we learned a lot,” Keller said. “We needed to defend harder. We struggled to score some goals early on [in the series]. At the end of the day, we did our best.”

Kamloops, which boasted an at-times-prolific offence during the regular season, mustered eight goals in the series, some of them in garbage time.

Jacob Dumansky, who turned 17 in January, was tied for the team lead in playoff goals and scoring, with two goals and three points.

Injuries to forwards Nathan Behm, an NHL Draft pick, and Ty Bonkowski, a top-six option, likely factored into the lack of production up front and certainly increased Kelowna’s depth advantage.

The visitors led 3-1 at the second intermission.

“In the third, we didn’t have much of a pushback and that’s just not good enough,” Michael said.

In what might feel like a moment of poetic revenge for Kelowna, Edmonstone relinquished the puck behind his net, with Tomas Poletin there to pounce and make it 4-1 early in the third period.

The most recent post-season meeting between the teams prior to this series took place in 2019, when Rockets’ goaltender Roman Basran had two similar slip-ups in a 5-1 loss to Kamloops in a tiebreaker game, the defeat ending their season.

“It’s a challenging position. Tonight wasn’t his best night,” Clouston said of Edmonstone, who allowed six goals on 30 shots. “He had four shutouts this year. All of February and March, he had all our wins except one. When we needed somebody to really step up and take over the net and have the consistency to give us an opportunity every night, he was the guy. We needed the best effort not just from Eddie, but from different individuals. Give Kelowna credit. They made it a big challenge.”

Boettiger stopped 31 shots to improve to 4-0 in the playoffs.

Cihar notched his sixth goal of the post-season and Lafreniere replied with his second of the game before Rockets’ captain Carson Wetsch rounded out the scoring.

Wetsch celebrated by using his stick as a broom, sweeping what little air was left in the building out onto Mark Recchi Way, tailwind for downtrodden fans heading home early.

“It’s one of the worst feelings in the world,” Blazers’ overage defenceman Rhett Ravndahl said of the mood in the dressing room. “I don’t even know how to describe that. It’s such a tight group. Love all those guys. And now it’s all over.”

by Marty Hastings

‘It’s one of the worst feelings in the world’: Rockets sweep Blazers out of playoffs in Round 1

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