Silos Up-And-Down Season Continues -- Great White Rumour Mill

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Subject: Silos Up-And-Down Season Continues

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Saskatoon Sun

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Date Posted: 20:38:36 02/28/03 Fri

Fresh off their first shutout victory in quite some time, the Saskatoon Silos entered their game against the Edmonton Eagles with a feeling that maybe their season was finally turning around. Instead, the Silos left Edmonton with a 4-2 loss, despite outshooting the Eagles 33-20.

Two bugaboos that have plauged Saskatoon all year, shaky goaltending and poor power play performance, were the main factors in this loss.

Goalie Nik Khabibulin's struggles against the Eagles continued, with his record falling to 1-3-0 in the season series. The Silos' #1 backstop simply hasn't been able to find any consistency this season, which has been a main contributor to Saskatoon's sub-.500 performance this season.

An 0-for-2 performance on the power play was just the latest power failure for that unit. Saskatoon's PP ranking has been dropping steadily in the past couple of weeks, which is making it difficult for the team experience a breakout stretch of games that many think is overdue.

For his part, coach Bob Hartley has remained calm through his team's disappointing first quarter.

"We have a number of good players on this team, too many to be playing below-.500 hockey", said the coach. "We need Nik's game to round into shape, and soon, and we might have to try some different things on the power play to get that group scoring."

With three losses to Edmonton so far this season, the Silos have wasted valuable points, which may come back to haunt them later in the season. Then again, three more quarters like the first one, and Saskatoon won't have to worry about making the playoffs.

Silo Siftings: To add injury to insult, the Silos lost the services of their top center, Alexei Yashin, for 3-4 games due to an eye injury. Some of the players in the Edmonton locker room saw this as justice, considering that the Eagles came away with three injuries in the two teams' previous meeting...Silos GM Ken McKenna made another trade earlier in the week, sending recently-acquired defenseman Stan Neckar to the B.C. Huskies in exchange for young center Milan Kraft. "Milan hasn't been quite the player that some expected, but our scouts like what they have seen from this kid in recent games. If he breaks out, he could be a great pickup for us."

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