» Hometown edge allowed Wellesley to tie series before tight battle in deciding game against Burford
 

After a season-long battle from the bottom up, the Wellesley Applejacks ended their year with a mixture of disappointment and pride last weekend.
As fans roared in the stands both Saturday at home and Sunday in Burford, the Jacks put up a fight against the Bulldogs, first winning game six 5-2 and then losing 2-1 in game seven.
This first-round loss was déjà vu for many of the players, who suffered the same fate last season. But the Jacks’ coach thinks they caught a bad break Sunday and that their luck could change next year.
“I thought we played well enough to win on Sunday. We played our game from start to finish: we hit, we played defensive, we kept the score down right where we wanted it. We just couldn’t catch a break in front of that net and, ultimately, it ended up costing us,” Kevin Lobsinger said.
Coming out for game six Mar. 1, the Jacks had a full crowd behind them and they used that to their advantage.
In the first, Mike Fisher gave his team the lead at 13:00 on a pass from Brady Hauck.
Then Owen Engel made it 2-0 in the first shift of the second from Scott Hanley, followed by a Burford goal less than a minute in.
At 10:33, Burford’s Dallas Boakes potted his second of the game to tie things up going into the second intermission.
“We got running around a little bit in the second period and that gave Burford the chance to come back and tie it up, but I thought the first period and the third period, we played our game and controlled the game,” said Lobsinger.
During the second break, Wellesley’s Scott Litt literally laid out the situation for his team.
He wrote down all the names of the players not coming back next year on a board and cautioned them not to let Saturday be the end of their hockey careers.
“That gave them that little bit of a boost, because all of a sudden you see 11 names on a board where this could be their last game. I think that gave them a little bit of a jump to get going.”
It also helped that a Burford player told the Jacks to get their golf clubs shined up as they headed into the dressing room, Lobsinger said.
Those comments, plus the fan-backing seemed to do the trick as the Jacks came out hard in the third, scoring three unanswered goals to force Burford into game seven.
“To see the stands that full and then you go up to Burford on Sunday and normally when we skate out on the ice, we’re getting booed out there every game in the playoffs, all of a sudden you can’t hear the boos because there’s 100 of our fans that are screaming and cheering as well – that was just fantastic.”
The first of the three goals came from Fisher, who scored his second of the game at 0:59 on a power play, followed by Jake Albrecht (assisted by Brock Gerber), and Engel from Brett VanGerwen at 12:22.
“Overall, Saturday’s game I thought we played well,” Lobsinger said, adding that the same was true for Sunday.
The difference in game seven however, was that the Jacks couldn’t keep their sticks on the puck.
After a scoreless first, Scott Litt (from Aaron Ryan and Engel) made it 1-0 in the first minute of the second period, followed by a Burford goal shortly afterwards.
Then, halfway through the second, Wellesley’s Scott Hanley accidentally tipped the puck in his own net after it hit the heel of his skate during a Burford power play.
“It was just an absolutely horrendous bad break.
“[And] the worst thing is it happened to a guy who gives you nothing but hard work out there and effort. … [He] was just hanging his head I think six inches lower than the ice because of what happened and it was totally not his fault: it was just bad luck,” Lobsinger said.
With a little over a minute to go in the third, the Jacks pulled their goalie, but to no avail. The final score was 2-1 and Wellesley rode the bus home from Burford one last time.
The team’s coach said that although the guys were upset, he encouraged them to think positively about next season when, hopefully, the fans will be back to support them all year.
“It’s one thing to play in front of mom, dad and a girlfriend. It’s another thing to actually play in front of people who, basically … are coming out to show their support of the 23 guys that are representing Wellesley.
“It goes a long way to those guys thinking, ‘you know what, I think I want to come back to Wellesley next year because look at the way the fans treat us.’”