A chance to jump five points ahead of the North York Rangers and position themselves comfortably in seventh place in the West Division went for not as the St. Michael’s Buzzers dropped their fourth straight contest to the Rangers this season on Sunday afternoon in North York by a score of 2-1.

For reasons inexplicable to Buzzers’ Head Coach Mike DePellegrin, the Rangers have been a thorn in the side of St. Michael’s all season long and have consistently given his team trouble.

“I wish I knew,” said DePellegrin, when asked why the Rangers have proven to be such a difficult opponent for the Buzzers this season. “They’ve turned it around and have had quite a stretch the last few games winning five in a row now.”

DePellegrin cited the Rangers’ strong puck support and hard working style as a big reason for their success.

“They work hard, they don’t make a lot of big mistakes and their little mistakes, they always seem to have a lot of puck support for them,” said the head coach, searching for answers. “They’re a hard working team, they never give up, they support the puck really well, they support each other really well and right now they were on a high coming in this afternoon and for two and a half periods, I thought they outworked us.”

That was certainly the case as the first period went scoreless with the Buzzers never challenging Rangers’ netminder Ryan Demelo with a quality scoring chance. In the second period, North York jumped up to a 2-0 lead on a pair of goals predicated on hard work.

Former Buzzer Eli Kim-Swallow jammed in a loose puck lying free in the goal mouth after going hard to the net at the 4:41 mark. Just over four minutes later, Luke Colavecchia won a battle for the puck deep in the Buzzers’ zone and walked out from the corner to beat netminder Joe D’Elia with a perfect shot high to the short side.
Just as they did in their win over the Newmarket Hurricanes on Thursday night, North York did a tremendous job of limiting their scoring chances against and took advantage of mistakes made by the Buzzers. A team that never quits, the Rangers kept outworking St. Michael’s until they ultimately wore them down.

“That’s exactly it,” said DePellegrin. “The way this game went was no different than how they played Orangeville and how they played Newmarket earlier in their winning streak. They sit there, they sit back, they don’t make a lot of mistakes and when they get chances, often times they bury them and that was the case this afternoon.”

The Buzzers seemed to find their legs midway through the third period, generating a number of decent scoring opportunities but they were unable to find the net until the 19:08 mark when Jesse Beamish scored a power play goal with six attackers on the ice. In the end though, it was too little, too late for St. Michael’s as North York was able to hold on for the victory.

Right back in action on Monday night, St. Michael’s will look to avenge an overtime loss to the Hamilton Red Wings three weeks ago and earn what is now an even more important victory after the loss to the Rangers. In order to see success though, the Buzzers will have to feature much more of the style of play they exhibited in the last half of the third period where they were able to outwork their opponents.

“Wins, that’s for sure, that’s what we need to accomplish (over our last three games,” said DePellegrin. “We need to go into the playoffs on a high and if we play those last few games the way we played that last few minutes of this afternoon’s game, I think we’ll be fine. That urgency and that commitment to detail and winning our wars and battles for the puck the way we did in the last five or six minutes, that’s the way we need to play the rest of the way.”