The Kimberley Dynamiters are one loss from the end of their playoff lives after losing 4-1 to the Creston Valley Thundercats last night.

After an uneven effort, Nitros’ head coach Kevin MacKay told his players they’ll need more than half the team competing to stave off elimination in Game 4 of the Eddie Mountain Division semifinal tonight (7:30 p.m., Civic Centre).

“We have to have everybody involved, and we didn’t have that (Monday),” he said. “Right from the start, we lacked energy, we lacked passion. We lacked a lot of things that shouldn’t be happening this time of year.”

One element that was in particularly short supply early was love from the referee. One way or another, it led to a 3-0 lead for Creston by the end of the first period.

With Brennan Foreman in the box for a borderline elbowing penalty, Colton Grolla fired a point shot that Kane Dawe redirected past Tory Caldwell at 4:32.

A couple of minutes later, a backchecking Thundercat defenceman got careless with his stick and clipped Chad Filatoff in the face. There was no call, and the puck was cleared out of the Creston zone. Travis Ludwar won a race for the biscuit, cut across the net, and made it 2-0.

Creston’s final goal of the period came at 19:01, when Jordan Johnson’s powerplay point shot made it through a crowd.

“The first period was horrendous, and it continued for half the second period,” said MacKay. “They got every break on calls early. When we got the five-minute major (late in the second period), I thought if we could capitalize there we could have really put the pressure on them.

“You know what? No matter how poor the refereeing is, it’s something we have to play through. I don’t think we fought through hard enough.”

Kimberley did score shortly after Colton Grolla was tossed for kneeing Logan Gutfriend.

The Nitros had about a minute of 5-on-3 to start things off, and made it count. Foreman banged in a rebound from the top of the crease at 15:11.

The Nitros weren’t able to build on that, and negated the last 1:21 of the major by taking a penalty of their own.

Despite some close calls in the third period, the Dynamiters couldn’t add to their score. Creston wrapped things up with an empty-netter at 17:51.

“I think if we get one break early that makes it 3-2 and puts the pressure back on them, but again we weren’t paying a price going to the net,” said MacKay. “We were getting shots, but from the outside. We really didn’t get a lot of penetration inside.”

Caldwell was Kimberley’s best player, stopping 30 of 33 shots.

Without stops like the one he made on a penalty kill with four minutes left — getting post to post to stop a one-timer — the score could have been much uglier.

“They got a lot of opportunities to put it away early, and TC made some great saves and kept us in. It’s almost like an expectation from him, that he’s going to do that for us,” said MacKay.

“He makes a huge save, and we didn’t feed off that. There wasn’t a lot of energy.”

At the other end, MacKay would have liked his players to get in Sunny Gill’s vicinity more often.

“Pucks were going to the net but we weren’t getting any follow up, any second presence there. That was frustrating. The rebounds were there if you wanted a goal — all you had to do was get to the net,” he said.

The Dynamiters would be heading to their respective homes with a loss tonight, but MacKay said he hopes they’ll play for themselves and pride.

“It’s going to be a good lesson to learn, and we’ll see what kind of character we have, how hard we battle and compete for that game (tonight),” he said. “Our focus has been one game at a time. We’ll get this one behind us and go forward.”

NOTES — Folks can catch the end of tonight’s Canada-Germany men’s Olympic hockey game (starts 5:30 p.m.) at the Civic Centre... Goaltender Michael Smith and forward Kieran Spice were sent home prior to the playoffs for ‘conduct unbecoming of a Dynamiter.’