Bruins on both ends of lopsided scores

Here's the story in today's Mercury about the Bruins' blowout win and blowout loss last week. Check back later today for a preview of tonight's game against the Hounds in Carlyle.

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The Estevan Bruins learned why it's better to give than to receive last week. 

A remarkable shift in less than 24 hours saw the Bruins go from flattening the Notre Dame Hounds 9-2 on Tuesday to getting slaughtered 9-0 by the Yorkton Terriers the next night.

The Jekyll and Hyde routine moved Estevan to 12-7 on the year, two points ahead of Weyburn in the battle for first place in the Sherwood Conference.

"You have a game like (Tuesday's win) and you're feeling really good about yourself and you feel like you can do nothing wrong, and you forget what you did to earn that," said Bruins head coach Keith Cassidy, who added that the difference between the two games "isn't personnel, it's the way we showed up mentally."

The only change to the lineup Wednesday was the absence of defenceman Dominic Perrault, who was attending to a personal matter. Jeff Bartel took his place.

After the loss to Yorkton, the Bruins got a week off leading into tonight's game against the Hounds in Carlyle. They used the time off to take a weekend trip to Grand Forks and watch the University of North Dakota take on St. Cloud State twice.

The Yorkton game began badly for the Bruins when a Terriers shot went off a skate and rolled slowly past goalie Steven Glass, barely crossing the goal line after hitting the post. Curtis Oliver got credit and would score another one 18 seconds later.

"We've gotta be mentally tough enough to battle through that and not let it affect us," Cassidy said. "Even from that point, I think we still had a reasonable effort. Our execution from that point on was pretty terrible."

Justin Lamontagne would give the Terriers a three-goal lead before the end of the period. 

The visitors continued to bring the pain, scoring four times in the second with markers from Brady Norrish, Keven Cann, Riley Paterson and Zak Majkowski to open up a 7-0 cushion after 40 minutes.

Ryon Sookro and Lamontagne, with his second of the night, rounded out the scoring in the third.

Cassidy didn't make any excuses for the poor showing.

"I'm through with saying these guys are a young team. I'm through with saying it's five games in six nights. It doesn't matter when we play, we gotta show up and play."

Tuesday's win was a much happier affair for the Spectra Place faithful, with the game summary following much the same path.

Read the rest of the story here.