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Sunday, April 9, 2000

The day after, IceRays feel the pain of season-ending defeat

Corpus Christi's hockey team contemplates how to improve for next year

By Matt Young
Caller-Times

While the New Mexico Scorpions stayed in Corpus Christi celebrating their playoff victory into the early morning hours Saturday, the IceRays showed up at Memorial Coliseum much later in the day to clean out their lockers and think about what might have been.
   The day after felt sour to the IceRays, who blew leads in the last two games, giving up four unanswered goals in each contest. New Mexico took advantage of Corpus Christi's collapses to win the Western Professional Hockey League President's Cup quarterfinal series, 3-1, with a 4-3 Game 4 victory Friday.
   "This loss is something that will stick with us, but you can't do anything about it now, so it's something you just try not to think about too much," IceRays coach Taylor Hall said.
   Two straight third-period collapses left several IceRays wondering if they shouldn't be the team moving on to the President's Cup semifinals instead of the Scorpions.
   "You know, I thought we played pretty solidly all series," IceRays rookie left wing Tobin Praznik said. "We played well enough to win both of those last two games, but it didn't happen. A lot of times in hockey, the team that wins is the team that gets the right bounces. We didn't get many bounces go our way. I think we easily could have been the team that won both of those games, and we could be talking about playing in the next series."
   Instead, IceRays management is thinking about next season and what it will take to get past the quarterfinals, which is where the IceRays have been eliminated in both of their seasons of existence.
   While Hall says he would like to keep the nucleus of his team intact, he admits there will have to be some changes.
   "It's hard to tell how guys will react in pressure situations until you get in those situations and see what happens," Hall said. "Some of our guys raised their game in those pressure situations, but other guys stayed the same or maybe even dropped off a little bit. That's not what you want to see. We will seek guys who have won championships in the past. We want guys with a history of winning."
   For the guys who return, Hall expects the failure to execute under playoff pressure to be a lesson to build on for next season.
   "Right now we have a lot of disappointment, but we also have a lot to look forward to," Hall said. "We have a bright future. I'm expecting the disappointment to be the fuel for the fire next season.
   "We've done pretty well the past two years, but it's not up to my standards yet. I think we're getting there. I think we have the right ownership group, coaches and core group of players to really do something special here. I'm expecting us to build a dominant team in Corpus Christi for years to come."
   The future may look bright, but as they cleaned out their lockers most of the players were still looking in the past.
   "Losing in the playoffs will definitely stick with us for a while," Praznik said. "It's something we'll be thinking about in the offseason and probably all the way up to next season, I'm sure."
  

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Staff writer Matt Young can be reached at 886-4304 or by e-mail at youngm@caller.com

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