Troy Leslie, head coach and GM of the Virden Oil Capitals, didn’t mince words after Sunday night’s 4-1 loss to the Selkirk Steelers at Tundra Oil and Gas Place.
“We got outworked – plain and simple,” he told oilcapshockey.com. “We got outworked in our own building and if we want to be the team that we feel we can be, we’ve got to be better on back-to-back nights.”
After a solid performance the night before in Portage which saw Virden score eight times, the Oil Capitals just couldn’t get on track against the Steelers. The club found itself in penalty trouble early and often and it resulted in a lacklustre performance in front of more than 700 fans on Thanksgiving weekend.
“Some of them maybe we didn’t deserve but the lions share we did,” Leslie said of the penalties his team committed. “The thing that bothered me most was we didn’t get a powerplay opportunity. You don’t draw penalties unless you outwork the other team and tonight we didn’t do that a whole lot and obviously it showed on that part of the ledger.”
Jeran Knorr scored the lone goal – his seventh of the season – at the 17:16 mark of the third period for the Oil Capitals, who dropped to 6-2-0-0 on the season. The Steelers meanwhile, improved to 3-4-0-0 on the year.
“It’s early and it’s a good lesson for us,” Leslie continued. “I’m not sure if we got ourselves prepared to play tonight or whether we were a little too high on our hog. A team came out and outworked us and this was the result.”
Dalton Dosch stopped 41 of 45 shots between the pipes for Virden, while Hayden Dola turned away 31 of 32 shots to pick up the win for Selkirk.
Next up for the Oil Caps is back-to-back home games against the OCN Blizzard on Friday and Saturday night. Game times for both contests are at 7:30 p.m.