Heartbreaking end to stellar season

Yarmouth Mariners’ season ends in Game 6 of MHL final

On the road to victory, one team always has to take a detour to Heartbreak City.

Such was the case for the Yarmouth Mariners, whose season came to an end at the conclusion of Game 6 of the MHL final.

It was a disappointing end for the Mariners who finished just two wins away from capturing the league championship and going to the Fred Page Cup in Ottawa.

On the flip side, the night capped off what has been an amazing season for the team – after all, they finished just two wins away from the capturing the league championship and going to the Fred Page Cup.

“It was a super group to be around. I was so proud to have the chance to coach them. They are a great bunch of kids,” said head coach Laurie Barron after the Game 6 loss.

“We won our division, which was an accomplishment, but to get this group to go to Ontario would have been super.”

Barron said there wasn’t any player on the team who didn’t give everything they had.

“After the sting goes away we’ll look back and say it was a hell of a year,” he said. “We’re back on the map now. We’ll go on from there. We’re going to get another chance to win that last game of the season.”

He just wishes it had been this year.

EVENLY MATCHED TEAMS

This had been a tight series between the Yarmouth Mariners and the Edmundston Blizzard. The first four games of the series saw the Blizzard win twice in double overtime, while the Mariners had an overtime victory and a regulation-time win of 1-0. In those first four games, neither team ever held more than a onegoal lead.

After a 6-2 loss in Game 5 that put the Blizzard ahead 3-2 in the series, the Mariners were looking for one last win on home ice on April 24 to push the series to a Game 7.

The Blizzard took a 1-0 lead in the first period on a goal by Gabriel Vanier.

The Mariners had a flurry of scoring chances at the end of the first period but couldn’t reach the back of the net and fell victim to one unlucky bounce after another.

Edmundston extended its lead to 2-0 in the first minute and seven seconds of the second period with a goal by Alexandre Jacob.

The Mariners cut that lead in half at 2:45 of the second period on a goal by Brent Broaders, but the celebration was short-lived as Edmundston’s Logan Johnston scored just 21 seconds later, putting his team up 3-1. Aaron Maillet later scored to put the Mariners within one again with a 4-2 score.

A 4-2 score is how the third period opened.

The period remained a scoreless affair with the Mariners pinging one of the goal post late in the period.

The Mariners pulled goalie Leif Hertz with 2:53 left in the period for the extra attacker.

The Blizzard’s final goal would come on the Mariners’ empty net with three seconds left in the game for the 5-2 win.

During the game Hertz stopped 28 of 32 Blizzard shots. In net for Edmundston goalie Francis Asselin stopped 36 of 38 Mariners shots.

For the Blizzard, the league win marks the franchise’s first playoff title since 2015, when the team was located in Dieppe and went by the name Commandos. Yarmouth Mariner Ben Chipman (22) puts an arm around goalie Leif Hertz as they look down ice and watch the Edmundston Blizzard celebrate their MHL league championship win.

The two teams shook hands at the conclusion of the game, with several embraces between players along the way.

Fans in the Mariners Centre gave the Mariners a resounding, and much-deserved, salute for their season, with the Blizzard team joining in that applause.

IMPRESSIVE SEASON

The Mariners finished the regular season in first place in their division with 71 points – 35 wins, 14 losses and one overtime loss – which placed them in second place overall in the league behind the Edmundston Blizzard, who had 76 points.

The Mariners defeated the Truro Bearcats in seven games in their semifinal playoff series and won the Eastlink South Division in five games over the South Shore Lumberjacks.

This was the team’s first trip to the MHL final since 2012, when they lost in triple overtime to the Woodstock Slammers in Game 7.

Not winning the league final was heartbreaking for the team once again but looking back 201718 was a great season.

“It was certainly an improvement over last year and it was a great group of guys,” said player Noah McMullin. “It’s friendships we’ll have forever.”

McMullin said from a personal perspective he was pleased with his play this year. He recorded a hat-trick in Game 1 of the final series, although, ever the gracious player, he smiled and said, “I think one of those might have been tipped.”

“But I certainly feel like I grew as a player. I took on a bit of a leadership role at the end of the year and just did what I could to help the team,” he said, adding playing in Yarmouth is always an amazing experience. “It’s a great atmosphere, it just doesn’t get much better than this.”

Teammate Luc Poirier, while disappointed the team didn’t capture the league title, agreed there One of the many chances late in the first period the Yarmouth Mariners had to score on the Edmundston Blizzard net. is much to be proud of.

“It was a great season. I’m proud of every single one of the guys that were in that dressing room with me. I thought we were going to be able to win it all, but unfortunately we just couldn’t get bounces,” he said. “Edmundston is a really great hockey team. I’ve played against some of those players my whole life. I’m happy for them that they were able to win if it couldn’t be us, but just disappointed by the way it turned out.”

It is always the goal of any team to make it all the way to the end, and back in the fall the Mariners had adopted a mantra – Let’s Play in May, a reference to the Fred Page Cup happening May 2-6.

Asked if he foresaw the team making it this far, and this close, Poirier said it’s sometimes hard to know at the start of a season.

But he said this team came together so well, so early, and also was able to get through some adversity early on.

“I knew there was something special,” he said.

Poirier said once the team won that playoff Game 7 against Truro – which he couldn’t play in due to an injury – he knew they were going to go all the way or come very close.

He said this was a great team, saying, “I’d rather lose with the group of guys in our dressing room than win with anyone else.” Mariner Adam Pilotte reacts to an Edmundston empty net goal late in the third period of Game 6 of the MHL final. The Yarmouth Mariners paid tribute to the Humboldt Broncos throughout the playoffs by wearing helmet stickers with the Broncos logo. That team suffered a great tragedy when a truck collided with their bus as they headed to a playoff game in Saskatchewan. Sixteen people on the bus were killed.