ENOCH — The good news during the Gators 2018-19 campaign is that it’s surprising to see them lose a game in regulation.

The bad news: Surprise!

The Gators left without a point for just the seventh time in 18 games, but given that it was to a team that was recently relegated down in the division, their 4-2 loss to the Ice Ninjas might be the most disappointing.

If they were writing the headline for this one it would be Van Damn. It was a roundhouse kick in the solar plexus.

“It’s a good sign that it’s not happening that often but we can’t let a game like that slip away from us,” said centre Travis Overton, after the Gators gave up three power even strength goals in the loss. “There’s no easy games by any means. We had no idea how these guys play and we weren’t prepared for it. And we were handling it well until we ran into backchecking trouble.”

Not to take anything away from the Ice Ninjas, who are on something of a revival of their own, 4-5-1 in their last 10 after a 1-9 season start nose dive threatened to end their season by the end of November. But with the Gators coming in as one of the most mediocre teams in the league, this probably could have gone another way.

Instead, rather than putting a little distance between themselves and the basement, the Gators allowed the Ice Ninjas to get some confidence in their new division.

“I thought we played a great first period, a perfect road period, and we had a really good start to the second,” said Shaw. “But over the last half of the game their ability to defend was much greater than ours was to score and that was the difference.

“We weren’t able to establish any zone time. It was a real battle and I thought their experience and competitiveness on the back end started to discourage us at times. They made it really hard on us to do anything.”

The Gators tied the game on the sixteenth goal of the season for Tremblay, and briefly went ahead on his seventeenth as well, but the Ice Ninjas battle back and added an empty netter to seal it.

TURNING A CORNER

The Ice Ninjas looked dead in the water just a couple of weeks ago, but they have really come on strong and are now, somehow, back in the playoff conversation.

Why? Because they weren’t as bad as they looked when they were on that 1-9 collapse.

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