An old problem came back to haunt the Kenora Thistles in their opening playoff game.

In many of the Thistles’ 44 games during the Manitoba Midget AAA Hockey League regular season they had lapses during games where they’d allow their opponents to get an advantage. It happened again Friday, Feb. 26 in their first round playoff game against the Winnipeg Wild.

For 30 minutes the Thistles played a hard-hitting, disciplined style of hockey and received solid goaltending from Brock Aiken, but a short span midway through the game allowed the Wild score four goals, which was more than enough.

The Wild won the game 5-1 at the MTS Iceplex inside the Canadian Tire Arena.

Thistles captain Kevin O’Flaherty, the goal scorer for Kenora, said his team needs to stop taking mid-game naps.

“Our feet stopped moving and they’re a quick team and they capitalized on that 10 minutes we just stopped playing hockey,” said O’Flaherty, 17. “It’s just a problem we’ve been having all year, hopefully it goes away in this last little bit so we can have a good end to our season.”

Aiken made 38 saves in the Thistles’ net while his counterpart, Mitchel Adamyk in the Wild net stopped 18 shots. The Thistles nearly doubled their shot total in the final period after putting 10 shots on the Wild goalie through 40 minutes.

The Wild (36-5-2-1) have won five straight games against the Thistles (21-21-2-0) this season.

After 30 minutes of solid hockey the Thistles had a mid-point breakdown in which the Wild took advantage to score three goals in less than four minutes. Ian Briscoe beat Aiken with a short-handed marker to give the home side a 1-0 lead and then just over a minute later it was 2-0 on a goal by Kelton Sutherland. Jesse Gibbons made it 3-0 for the Wild soon after.

Before the period was done, Briscoe added a power-play goal to go with his shorty for the 4-0 advantage.

The Thistles started the third period with a goal from O’Flaherty, assisted by the team’s regular season leader Mike Withers, but the Wild proved too strong for the visitors to mount any kind of comeback from a three-goal deficit.

“I just got a nice pass in the slot and I just put my head down and shot,” said O’Flaherty.

Brett Namaka added a late power-play goal for the Wild to complete the scoring.

“We just have to keep our feet moving and just keep playing hard and battle through tough situations,” said O’Flaherty about what the Thistles need to do in the next game.

Game 2 in the best-of-five series goes Sunday, Feb. 28, 2:30 p.m. at the Kenora Recreation Centre