The Sports Corner

Heat will see how resilient they really are

The Abbotsford Heat will take on the Hamilton Bulldogs in Game 6 of the North Division final beginning at 4:30 p.m. PDT. The Heat trail 3-2 in the series and need to win tonight to force a Game 7.

John Lammers was the picture of despair at the end of Saturday night.

The Abbotsford Heat forward looked skyward then covered his head with both hands as he watched Ryan Russell slide the puck into a wide open net to put the Hamilton Bulldogs up 4-2 in the dying seconds of Game 5 of the North Division final.

Literally seconds before Russell sealed what would be an eventual 5-2 Dogs win to send the series back to Hamilton for Game 6 tonight and the Heat on the brink of elimination, Lammers missed a glorious opportunity to tie things at three goals apiece and send the game to overtime.

Lammers was sprung free on a breakaway from about 25 feet out against Dogs goalie Curtis Sanford thanks to a glorious pass from Mikael Backlund.

He deked Sanford nearly out of his pads and was starring down a wide-open 4×6 cage when the puck hopped over his stick and into the corner.

The game was on his stick, and as luck would have it, things rolled on him just at the last second.

It was one of those nights.

Where the Heat responsible in anyway for letting a 2-0 lead slip away, thus leaving them in need of repeating their own historical feet of winning Game’s 6 and 7 of a series in order to advance to the next round?

Yes. Hamilton turned things up a notch right after Cam Cunning scored his first of the post-season to put the Heat up by two goals and the Bulldogs on increasingly thin ice.

And Abbotsford couldn’t handle the heat.

“We got down there 2-0 so we had to fight back,” said Bulldogs forward Mike Glumac, who scored two goals, including the tying goal midway through the third period off Heat defenceman Gordie Baldwin’s skate.

“It’s a great game by the guys to be able to come back from that deficit.”

This certainly wasn’t the first time the Bulldogs came back in a game they trailed in and, conversely, it isn’t the first time the Heat have looked in control of a game only to loosen the noose and allow the opposition to wriggle free.

“The thing is, we’ve done this so many times this year,” said Bulldogs head coach Guy Boucher.

Just 100 feet down the hall, however, the feeling inside the Heat locker room resembled that of a funeral.

It was quiet. It was bleak. An air of disappointment hung thick in the dressing room like smog in the Fraser Valley during a summer dry spell.

The Heat were literally 10 minutes away from taking a 3-2 series lead back to Hamilton with at least two chances to pull off the biggest upset of these Calder Cup playoffs so far.

Now, they’ll play just to live another day when they hit the ice of Copps Coliseum tonight for a must-win Game 6.

And after a season in which the newbie AHL franchise has faced over 450 man games lost to injury and call-ups, as well as at least three off ice controversies that garnered international media attention, the Heat will stare down the ultimate test of adversity.

And once again, they have dug themselves into this hole.

But as we’ve seen all year round, the Heat have always seemed to pull themselves right back out.

However tonight, there is no other option.