Ten days after its victory in Davos, HC Ajoie failed to repeat such a performance on the road in the National Ice Hockey League. The Jura team lost 5-1 on Friday evening on the ice of a solid CP Berne. While leading 1-0, HCA made too many defensive errors to hope to return from the capital with points. In the standings, Ajoie remains in last position, nine points behind Lugano who will visit Porrentruy on Saturday.
Mistakes that cost a lot of money
The HCA delivered a very good first third. Solid, he closed the enclave and forced the Bernese to act mainly away from the cage guarded by Damiano Ciaccio, while Benjamin Conz was announced as a supernumerary. More dangerous, the Vouivres have acquired several actions. The clearest was missed by Philip-Michaël Devos, a few seconds before Jonathan Hazen opened the scoring, receiving a pass from his Quebec teammate. CP Bern took time to get up and managed to do so thanks to the lack of regularity of the HCA which loosened the grip. The Bears took advantage of the laxity of the Julius Nättinen-Oula Pavle pair to equalize, before taking advantage of a big disagreement between Louis Robin and Marco Maurer to score the second shortly after halfway through the match. As if that wasn’t enough, a difficult line change cost a surplus converted by the excellent Lukas Klok. In two minutes, the Bernese had stunned the Jurassians who had held out their sticks to be beaten. This turnaround is regrettable, especially since Anttoni Honka adjusted the goal shortly before the half-hour mark and Ajoie wasted two possibilities at five against four. Defender Joel Scheidegger was not mistaken when analyzing it: “We didn’t continue as we started. (…) we are sad today,” he declared.
-Kilian Bernasconi machine gunned
Surprise at the start of the last third: Damiano Ciaccio (injured?) gave way to young Kilian Bernasconi in front of the Jura nets. The poor Ticino was going to suffer the full brunt of his team’s sluggishness, he who faced 23 shots on target from CP Berne who still scored two pawns, the first two goals conceded by Bernasconi in the elite of Swiss hockey. The HCA was no longer there, no longer found the spark to worry the Bernese rearguard. Symptomatic of this lack of creativity, Oula Palve was demoted to the third row… certainly, more consistency will be needed when approaching the “final” this Saturday against Lugano. Greg Ireland’s long post-match theory certainly went that way… /mle
