Keith Hershmiller
Eastern Division

Pats surge back to beat Hurricanes

Written by Kevin Shaw on

 

In their sixth and final meeting of the season, the ninth-place Regina Pats and seventh-place Lethbridge Hurricanes battled it out in an extremely important “four-point” game.

The Pats picked up a huge two points with a come-from-behind 6-4 win over the host Hurricanes. Trailing 4-3 with just over 10 minutes left, the Pats scored three goals in a span of 5:07 to give them the lead and eventual victory.

With the win, the Pats moved into eighth place in the conference with 51 points (23-27-3-2), one point behind the Hurricanes (52 points – 24-28-3-1).

“It was a great effort tonight,” said Regina Pats assistant coach Ken Schneider. “It was a tough game in a pretty tough environment tonight. We started out slow a bit, we were a little tentative but we started to find our feet and got our game going and it was kind of back and forth. We did something tonight that we haven’t really done all season and that was: we chased in the first and gave up some penalties late, which in the past have gone the wrong way for us but tonight our penalty kill was tremendous late in the game.”

In a very slowly paced opening period that featured 25 (14-11 Pats) faceoffs and both teams managed to get on the board.

A long point shot by Nolan Bentham beat Pat starter Matthew Kieper to give the Hurricanes a 1-0 lead just 4:21 into the game. His fourth of the season was set up by Yegor Klavdiev and Brayden Edwards.

It took until the 12:13 point of the game for the Pats to register their first shot on the Hurricanes.

A huge late period surge by the Pats, aided by a powerplay led to the tying goal.

Connor Bedard extended his point streak to 19 games when he tied the game with the man advantage as he roofed his shot past Bryan Thomson to make it 1-1. His 39th of the season which was scored at 17:08 of the first period was assisted by Ryker Evans and Tanner Howe.

The shots were 9-4 through 20 minutes of play.

Klavdiev gave the Hurricanes their one-goal lead back at 4:16 when his shot from the top of the circle beat a screened Kieper over his glove hand. The powerplay marker was his 13th of the season assisted by Logan McCutcheon and Jett Jones.

Bedard got the game back to even terms. He put a shot toward the Hurricane net that was slowed by a Hurricane defenseman and as Thomson went to cover the puck it went off his trapper and into the net. His unassisted goal at 13:34 tied it at 2-2. He is the second DUB player to score 40 on the season.

Pats captain Logan Nijhoff (16th) gave them their first lead of the game at 15:33 of the period. His initial shot was stopped by Thomson and Cole Dubinsky put a rebound just wide to the left of the net that ricocheted back to the right side where Nijhoff was able to stuff it home. Howe picked up the second assist on the 3-2 goal.

Jared Picklyk replaced Thomson after the third Pats goal.

The Pats headed into the second period break up 3-2 and trailing on the shot clock 23-16 (14-12 Lethbridge in the second). Another 30 faceoffs (18-12) in the second period really took the flow away from the contest.

When it rains it pours.

The Hurricanes tied the contest a 3-3 at 7:23 when Alex Thacker worked the puck deep and fed a pass in front to Justin Hall who deposited his 32nd of the season into the Pats cage.

Just 33 seconds later Hall’s second of the game gave the Hurricanes a 4-3 lead. His original shot was blocked and he grabbed the loose puck and beat the Pats netminder with his 33rd of the season.

The rain quickly stopped and the Pats bounced back.

Just over two minutes later at 10:10 Neithan Salame scored his third of the season to tie the game up at 4-4. Salame was deep on a forecheck and he was able to tip home a Bedard shot from in tight. Dubinsky picked up the second assist.

Layton Feist got into the action when he fired home a one-time shot from the left side boards that beat Picklyk. Cole Carrier and Jakob Brook picked up the assists on Feist’s seventh of the season and the eventual game-winner at 14:22.

Less than a minute later Dubinsky deked around the Lethbridge defender and put a nice move on the Hurricane goalie and notched his 17th of the season while the teams skated 4-on-4.

The Pats took a pair of late minors and gave the Hurricanes a late 5-on-3 man advantage for over a minute. The Hurricanes pulled their goalie for the extra attacker, but the Pats stepped up and killed both minors.

“[We] really didn’t want to get into that situation, but it happened, it’s a physical game out there. Kudos to our whole team tonight,” said Schneider of the late penalty kills that helped seal the win.

The Pats take home a huge two points in a 6-4 win.

The final shots were 35-26 for the Hurricanes (12-10 in the third).

The powerplays: 1-for-2 for the Pats, 1-for-4 for the Hurricanes.

The final faceoff count was 73 (38-35 Regina).

Kieper made some key saves and stopped 31 of 35 to pick up the win. Thomson stopped 11 of 14 shots in 35:33 before being replaced by Picklyk who stopped nine of 12 while taking the loss.

“The dressing room’s alive,” said Schneider after the important win. “We get to go home now with a smile on our face[s] and get ready for Moose Jaw Saturday night. That’s the next one on the schedule and we gotta get ready to get prepared to play but we’re going to enjoy this for a couple of hours and get some sleep and get back to work here.”

Patterings: The three-stars were: Bedard (2G-1A), Klavdiev (1G-1A), and Dubinsky (1G-2A) …The Pats’ next game action is Saturday, March 19th when they travel down Highway One to face their Trans-Canada rival Moose Jaw Warriors.