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Things looked like the Homeless Dads were going to make some noise in the playoffs. They were facing a team that they had beaten in the regular season, the Buffalo Lasers. The midseason matchup saw the Homeless Dads win with a 4-1 score, and despite losing the late season matchup 5-1 on the road, the team was hoping to win at least one game in the series.

“Well, we lost to them on aggregate 6-5 during the year, so maybe it was unrealistic to expect to win the series, but an overall goal difference that close meant we could've at least pulled off one playoff victory,” Coach Tuomo Riihihuhta reflected on the series. “The biggest thing was the same story we saw in our last matchup with the Lasers, imploding in the final few minutes.”

The Homeless Dads had a strong showing in their final regular season game against the Lasers, only down 2-1 after 50 minutes, before allowing 3 goals in the final ten minutes. As coach Riihihuhta alluded to, that continued in the playoffs. The Homeless Dads had a lead in the first game on the road going into the third and were tied up with two minutes left in the game. Team defense fell apart for the Homeless Dads and the Lasers scored with 1:08 left and 0:30 left to win 5-3. The story continued into the second game of the series on the Homeless Dads' home ice, as they allowed the game winning goal 1:37 left.

General manager, Stefan Stanka added on his team's poor showing in the first round: “The worst part about falling apart at the end of these games, is that we scored first in both of them. We held three one-goal leads in the first game and two one-goal leads in the second. Does it show we could compete with them? Yes, it does, and that could be something to be proud of, but when you get to the bottom of it, that is five blown leads. We should've performed much better when we got ahead. Our lack of execution of team defense are what failed us. Couple the problems in our own zone, with a goalie like Allan Glass at the other end, and that's the story of the series.”

While the Homeless Dads applied plenty of pressure in the two games against the Lasers, 32 and 27 shots, respectively, they found the net just 3 and 2 times. A lot of that had to do with the outstanding play of Allan Glass (91.5 save %). He completely stonewalled Homeless Dads' star Ladislav Ševčík on 7 shots. In fact, he completely shut down the Homeless Dads' second and third lines, and aside from the first goal of the series by Bobby England, the first line as well. The utterly impressive play of their fourth line is what kept them alive, as Martin Grežo, Máté Klausz, and Friedrich Matthias combined for four goals and two assists in the two games, along with defenseman Ostap Czerkawski adding in four assists, to lead the Homeless Dads in points. Those four players kept the Homeless Dads alive and in the competition, when going up against a supreme goaltender like Glass. In fact, Czerkawski, Grežo, and Klausz were the three stars of the second game, albeit in a losing effort.

“I can't say enough about our fourth line. These guys are fantastic, playing in limited situations and limited time,” coach Riihihuhta praised his fourth line. “Máté, Friedrich, and Martin have been great, and since we gave Ostap a shot in the lineup, he's made the most of it. Those guys definitely forced our hands into making some lineup changes for the next series. They have certainly been our best line, and we're going to reward them with second line duty and power play time.”

The coach outlined a couple more line up changes: “Additionally Robert Galiov and Bastian Pfeiffer have cooled down notably these past few weeks, so we're making them scratches. We brought in some good Slovakian players in Vladimír Kováč and Ľubomír Murín to help out, and we figured it's time to give them the ice time to see what they can do. We're going to get them involved in a fourth line role with Ondrej (Habera).”

The Homeless Dads will play the Bedford Snipers in the playoffs for fifth place starting Wednesday. The Snipers started off the season strong, but have fizzled down the stretch and were hoping to make noise in the playoffs, as they are one of the most talented teams in the league, but they fell by two 8-3 scores to BHK Posavina.

Coach Riihihuhta had this to say about the upcoming opponents of the Homeless Dads: “They're going to be a hungry team. We may be the favourites, but they've got a lot of talent and they aren't in the position they want to be. There's a sizable amount of lucky and unlucky bounces in this business, and if there weren't, the Snipers would be playing for promotion. We hope we can move on to the fifth-sixth playoff and that this new lineup can make our fans proud!”

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