After losing their third game in a row Saturday night, Kootenay Ice head coach Mark Holick didn't consider their recently hectic schedule a suitable excuse.

The Ice lost 4-1 on Saturday to the non-playoff-bound Lethbridge Hurricanes, one night after losing 5-3 to the Tigers in Medicine Hat.

It was Kootenay's sixth game in nine nights.

“I think we're using that ‘tired' excuse a little too much that they're starting to believe it,” said Holick. “I think there are guys that took some shortcuts (Saturday). I thought we worked fairly hard, but we didn't work smart at all. We made a series of low-percentage plays.”

He counted eight turnovers at Lethbridge's blueline in the last half of the opening frame.

“Some of our offensive guys think that all of a sudden we're the Russian national team or something and we can tic-tac-toe. We've got to realize that teams want to beat us. We've had 39 wins in this league; we're a team that's a good team, but the key word there is ‘team.'”

Red Deer beat Edmonton on Saturday to pull within three points of Kootenay. The Rebels have a game in hand.

“We're not a team that guys are going to take lightly anymore, and they're going to be ready for us,” said Holick. “If Lethbridge is going to come out and beat us, they're going to have to come out and play hard, and they did that. They got 19 shots and four goals, and they got some opportunistic chances.”

Former Ice defenceman Cason Machacek got things going 45 seconds in, when his wrist shot along the ice rolled between Nathan Lieuwen and the post.

Kootenay's best chance in the first period came after Matt Fraser was hooked on a breakaway, and he hit the post on the resultant penalty shot.

Lethbridge nearly got up two 50 seconds into the second period, but defenceman Joey Leach stacked his meager pads to rob Marysville's Carter Bancks of an open-net shot.

Kootenay tied it on a power play late in the second, when Fraser made a short pass from behind the net to Max Reinhart who fired in his 19th of the campaign.

The start of third period was delayed to deal with a Zamboni malfunction, but the Ice probably wish it had never begun at all.

At 3:27, Neil Tarnasky's backhand spin pass from the corner found Ryon Moser alone in front, and he potted his sixth of the season.

Within a minute, Kootenay had a bouncing chance go wide. That led to a breakaway the other direction, and Mitch Maxwell's backhander spelled the end of Lieuwen's night.

Todd Mathews held the fort until two minutes remained, when Cam Braes's one-timer made it 4-1.

Brandon Anderson made 20 saves in picking up his 11th win of the season.

Holick wishes the former Columbia Valley Rocky had been tested more, saying the club talked about getting shots to and traffic in front of the young goalie.

“He made some nice saves, there's no doubt, but all of a sudden we're passing cross-crease when we've got open shots. We've got the puck five feet from the net and we take it 12 feet from the net. They were just dumb plays. I don't know if guys are squeezing their sticks a little bit, but at the end of the day you're not going to score if you don't get a puck to the net, and our last five or six games we've been well under 30 (shots). You've got to be up in the high-30s to score three-plus in this league.”

Kootenay hemmed Lethbridge in their zone at times, but had all kinds of passes and shots blocked.

“You can't just keep blasting them in the shinpads. When a guy goes down, you've got to get your head up, take a look,” said Holick. “They're major junior hockey players... If you've got to move, move your feet.”

Holick said assistant coach Kris Knoblauch has been working on exactly that in practice.

“Then we come into a game and we've got 10 or 15 blocked shots in a night, and one turned into a breakaway goal for them. We've got to be way smarter than that.”

On Friday in Medicine Hat, the Ice overcame a 3-1 deficit in the third period only to have the Tigers score twice more by game's end.

Fraser had two goals for Kootenay, while Dustin Sylvester had a pair of assists. Kevin King scored first for the Ice.

Tristan King had a four-point night (2G, 2A) while Linden Vey added a goal and two helpers. Wacey Hamilton and Cameron Bretton (empty net) rounded out Medicine Hat's scoring.

Both goalies made 21 saves, with Mathews taking the loss; Tyler Bunz picked up his 27th win.