To go up 3-1 in the series. This game should have been a lot easier than it was. Komets led 3-0 and then 3-2, 4-2 and 5-3, and the momentum flipped simply because they tried to get too cute. They quit dumping and chasing and tried to turn it into a track meet and that allowed Rapid City to get its balance back and then gain the momentum. Stupid penalties.
``It seems we never want to do things the easy way,'' Komets coach Al Sims said. ``It's been one goal pretty much the whole series other than the first game. It's what pushes our team, letting them catch up and get close, and then trying to take it away from them.''
The only reason RC didn't come all the way back is because Nick Boucher didn't lose his aggressiveness. He kept charging out of his goal to challenge shooters and cut down angles which really saved the Komets. He gave up a pair of power-play goals but made 27 saves, including a bunch of tough ones in the third period when most of the game seemed to be played in the Fort Wayne zone.
``We just stopped doing the things that made us successful to get three goals,'' Sims said. ``We were getting everything deep and using the points, getting to the crease. I think we got a tip and a rebound goal. When we got up 3-0, we stopped doing it. We started to play fancy and trying to stickhandle and we turned pucks over in the neutral zone. They got opportunities off the rush, which they are a very good rush team. They hurt us. ``The momentum changed because we stopped doing what we had been doing to be successful, and that's happened to us more than one time this year.''
