The Nipawin Hawks meet the La Ronge Ice Wolves Friday on the road. (Clark Stork)

By Clark Stork

Hawks head north

Hawks look for offense in weekend series against La Ronge

Nov 5, 2021 | 11:48 AM

The Nipawin Hawks are looking to snap a four-game winless streak Friday night in La Ronge against the Ice Wolves in Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League (SJHL) action.

Nipawin hasn’t played since a 2-1 shootout loss to the Kindersley Klippers on Oct. 30. This is the team’s first matchup with the Ice Wolves since an opening weekend sweep in late September. Hawks head coach Doug Johnson said this weekend is a crucial inter-division showdown.

“It’s a huge weekend, we’re a quarter the way through the year basically and now is when you kind of start looking at the standings,” Johnson said. “Okay there is some playoff races developing, we don’t want to be battling for that last playoff spot in February. We want to get a cushion here and this is a great weekend to do it.”

The Hawks currently sit in the final playoff spot with 14 points, the Ice Wolves are just a pair of points behind. Nipawin’s recent struggles can be attributed to the club’s lack of offense. The team’s young forward group hasn’t generated much in terms of goals. Johnson said the team spent a good part of the week trying to find ways to beat opposing netminders.

“[With] 20 goals in our last 10 games, we’re not going win many games scoring two goals a game, three goals in our last two games. There’s a lot of offense on our team, but they are young and we don’t have a lot of experience to help them out,” Johnson added.

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Finding ways to produce on the man advantage would go a long way. The team’s powerplay efficiency is 13 percent, that’s 10^th in the 12-team league. Johnson said the team needs to work harder to create more powerplay chances.

“We’ve had times where it’s been really good, you look at the first game against Kindersley in that home-and-home and then the second game it looks like a dog’s breakfast, it’s that consistency of making the plays when we need it. If we aren’t moving our feet, if we’re not going to drive the net, if we aren’t going to make the defensemen really move, we’re not going to create those powerplay chances, we need to be more aggressive,” he said.

The Hawks scored 10 goals in the first two games between the two with Chase Hamm picking up the win in both contests.

This weekend’s games are both 7:30 p.m. starts beginning in La Ronge on Friday. The game will be broadcasted on CJVR with the pregame show of Rona Nipawin Hawks hockey starting 15 minutes ahead of puck drop.