The team that Red Deer passed for the final playoff spot came to the Enmax Centrium looking for some sense of revenge. Red Deer was attempting to do the unthinkable and pass the Lethbridge Hurricanes for home ice advantage in the first round of the WHL playoffs.
The Ice entered the contest on a nine game slide (0-7-2-2) while the Rebels were coming in on a three game winning streak, most recently besting the Hurricanes in Red Deer on Wednesday night.
With Riley Lamb between the pipes for the Rebels, the team thought they had a fighting chance to catch the Hurricanes.
Kootenay had other ideas.
The Ice came storming out of the gate scoring their first goal of the game just 4:29 in. Alec Baer scored his 29th goal of the season. He received a pass from Colton Kroeker and Baer beat a screened Lamb.
The Rebels continued to struggle to generate any offense, being out shot 9-2 through the first half of the period.
Near the midway point of the period the lights decided to play havoc with the game for the second time. After a few second they came back on and play resumed. It was a sign of things to come for the Rebels who would experience their own power outage.
A late Rebels penalty, their second of the period would see the Ice extend their lead to two.
With Josh Tarzwell in the box and the seconds ticking down, the Ice got the puck over to Kroeker. His 15th of the season made its way to the back of the net with less than a second left on the clock. The teams would then head straight down their tunnels. The Ice out shot the Rebels 20-4.
The second period started much the same for the Rebels. The team was just unable to generate anything resembling a forecheck. The Ice did a good job of clogging up the passing lanes and intercepting pass after pass.
The Rebels did have a breakthrough after the second period radio timeout. Catching a break on some offensive zone time, Chris Douglas passed the puck off to Brandon Cutler, then headed to the net. With an Ice defender trying to beat Cutler back to the return pass, the puck deflected in to the crease slowly past Matt Berlin. Credit Cutler with his sixth goal of the season, cutting the Ice lead to one.
Less than a minute later though the Ice would retake their two goal lead.
Peyton Krebs would gain the Rebels zone and circle the entire offensive zone. Once he completed his lap, he found Brett Davis in the right corner and he slid it to Gilian Kohler who was alone in the slot. All Kohler had to do was slide it by Lamb to make it 3-1 Ice.
Colin Paradis and Cameron Hausinger dropped the gloves with six minutes to play in the second period. The Rebels were looking to spark their team and the melee certainly did swing the momentum in their favor at least momentarily.
Just 34 seconds after the fight, Brandon Hagel would gain the Ice zone and dish to Mason McCarty. McCarty had to make a move to keep the puck in the zone, then deked out his own player and wired a shot past a very screened Matt Berlin. The Ice lead was just one goal yet again.
Unfortunately for the Rebels, the lights went out again, literally and figuratively.
With Ethan Sakowich in the penalty box for hooking, the Ice would use the man-advantage to their advantage yet again. This time it was a pass from behind the net by Martin Bodak to a streaking Keenan Taphorn. He didn’t have to do much as Lamb wasn’t prepared for his attempt. Kootenay would put itself out front by two goals yet again.
When the dust settled on the second period the Rebels trailed 4-2 and also lagged behind in shots on goal 31-16.
In the third period the 5205 fans in attendance were as loud as they had been all season. Unfortunately for them, it was because of some interesting calls (or non-calls) by the officials.
Yet again the Rebels found themselves in penalty trouble when a weak call was made on McCarty that put his team down a player for two minutes. The Rebels penalty killers did not make it through the entire penalty as some tape to tape passes by the Ice had the team running around and resulted in another Ice goal.
This time it was Gilian Kohler scoring, his eighth of the season. The assists went to Davis and Martin Bodak but every player on the Kootenay side had touched the puck before it hit pay dirt.
In a bit of a surprise move, Brent Sutter pulled Riley Lamb with about seven minutes to play. It was an attempt to close the three-goal gap and spark the team in hopes of preserving a potential first round home ice advantage. It did not go as planned when Davis scooped up the puck in his own end and passed it to Kohler. He would then get it to Krebs who only had to beat one Rebel defender before he made it 6-2 Ice.
The game would get a little bit chippy towards the final moments. Jacob Herauf and Kaeden Taphorn would drop the gloves. It was all Herauf in this battle but it was too little too late.
Brent Sutter didn’t mince words in the post game media scrum, “It wasn’t good. Douglas’ line played well. I didn’t like our other two lines at all tonight. I thought our top two lines got out played tonight.”
On the penalties and the penalty killers (killing off just two of five penalties) he wasn’t impressed, “We took some bad penalties, our penalty killers weren’t very good tonight. We were inbetween and we didn’t work hard on it but that was just a reflection of what our game was.”
Rebel Yell… In a pre-game ceremony the Rebels announced their winners of the annual awards. There were just seven awards given out this year.
- Most Underrated Rebel – Reese Johnson
- Top Defenseman – Dawson Barteaux
- Community – Grayson Pawlenchuk
- Leading Scorer – Mason McCarty
- Players Award (voted on by the team) – Reese Johnson
- Rookie of the Year – Ethan Anders
- Team MVP – Kristian Reichel
The three stars on the night were 1) Gilian Kohler (2g, 1a) 2) Martin Bodak (3a) 3) Peyton Krebs (1g,1a). Alec Baer led all players with 7 shots on net while Brandon Cutler was the top Rebel shooter with 4. Chris Douglas was 10-of-18 in the faceoff dot while Brett Davis was 10-of-17 for the Ice. Red Deer and Kootenay close out their regular season tomorrow night in Cranbrook. The game is likely to see many younger players in the lineup as it is now a “meaningless” game for both teams. By virtue of the Red Deer loss the Lethbridge Hurricanes clinched second in the Central Division and home ice advantage in the first round.
