Hard work continued to pay off as the Regina Pats (8-9-2-1) beat the Saskatoon Blades (14-3-2-1) for the first time in the season. The Pats scored four goals in the last forty minutes for a hard-fought 4-2 win over the second-place Blades.
“Obviously against them, it’s big, because they have had our number,” explained Pats’ head coach Dave Struch. “For me, it’s not so much them having our number, but the way we’ve played against them hasn’t been very good.”
The Blades had outscored the Pats 17-7 in the three previous contests. The Pats had something to say about that and carried their great play over from their last game against the Raiders.
“I look at these last six periods in the way that we’ve played and how we won the games. I think that becomes the best part of the win tonight, no matter who it was against,” said Struch. “because it was a hard-fought physical game. We did so many things, the simplest things in the game of hockey the right way. We stuck with it, even in the third period. It’s going to be interesting to see where we get to.”
Here are how things went…
An even but uneventful first period as both teams had chances but neither team got on the board.
The teams then erupted with five goals in the second period.
38 seconds into the second, Caiden Daley gave the Blades the lead. He tipped a Rhett Rhinehart point shot past Roddy Ross for his seventh of the season. The Blades had a 1-0 lead which was their lone lead of the game.
Ryker Evans stole the puck from a Blades defenseman and sent Carter Chorney in on a shorthanded breakaway. Chorney made no mistake ripping a wrister past Nolan Maier. His fourth goal of the season at 4:11 tied the game at 1-1.
Layton Feist gave the Pats their first lead against Saskatoon. He got the puck at the point, danced into the circle, and wired a wrist shot past the Blade goaltender. His fourth of the season gave the Pats a 2-1 lead at the 8:30 mark. Chorney and Logan Nijhoff picked up the assists.
A Pat dump-in went off the linesman and Brandon Lisowsky picked up a free puck. He went in alone on Ross and fired the puck stick-side. Lisowsky’s seventh at 13:51 tied the game at 2-2.
The Pats took a 3-2 lead at 17:24 when Carson Denomie connected for his 13th of the season. Evans carried the puck to the side of the Blade goal and sent a pass to Denomie who ripped a one-timer past Maier. Tom Cadieux added the secondary assist.
Kyle Walker scored his first goal of the season into an empty net to give the Pats a 4-2 lead with 1:04 left. The Pats held on and finished off the win.
“You play the same team so many times in the bubble. I mean, I feel there’s a rivalry with every game now,” said Walker. “It was great to get the win on Saskatoon. They’re a really good team, but we just played super hard tonight and we did the right things in the right areas.”
“They pushed back on us and we responded well,” Struch said as the Blades never gave up. “I know they had some guys out of the lineup, but they play a really good game. They play hard, they play physical. We did some things that we have seen flashes of in this shortened season, but we built on the last game and we did so many more right things right to get this win. I mean even being hard to play against doing things that we haven’t done consistently. We’ve done (them) consistently for six periods now.”
“So, no matter what the outcome, the way we’re playing is hard hockey and we’re hard to play against.”
Ross was strong in the Pats net making 20 saves on 22 shots.
Patterings: Evans extended his point streak to 10 games with an assist on the Pats’ opening goal… With his goal, Walker was the 18th different Pat to score in the Hub… The Pats’ next game action is Thursday when play the Swift Current Broncos at 8 p.m.
