In a game that the Regina Pats needed to win to get back on track and keep in the playoff hunt. Garin Bjorklund and the Medicine Hat Tigers gave it their best effort, but the Pats pulled off a 2-0 win.
A powerplay marker with less than seven minutes left was what the Pats needed to break the goose egg and an empty-netter just over five minutes later sealed the win.
Kelton Pyne made 21 saves for his second win, both by shutout, both at the Brandt Centre.
“He obviously loves the Brandt Centre,” said Pats goaltender coach Rob Muntain “Two starts, two shutouts for him, it’s pretty crazy, he’s on a pretty solid ride right now. He’s loving it.”
“Kelton is a really good teammate and the guys in front of him absolutely love him, and you can just see the way they play in front of him.”
“It’s unbelievable, there are not many words for it,” said Pyne on his shutout performance.
“He’s been unreal,” Ryker Evans said of Pyne. “To get thrown into these games like this and get shutouts, it’s been unreal and we couldn’t thank him enough for coming up with these big wins for us.”
Neither team was able to score in the opening 20 minutes. The Pats outshot the Tigers 13-2 in the first period. 19-year-old Tiger goalie Bjorklund stopped all 13 shots he faced, including a pair of shorthanded breaks.
Through forty minutes neither team were able to get on the board. The Pats threw everything but the kitchen sink at Bjorklund, but he was up to the task as he stopped all 30 shots through two periods. Kelton Pyne had done his job in the Pat net stopping 1/3 of the shots of his counterparts’ shots, stopping all 10.
It took 53:31 and the Pats finally found a chink in the Bjorklund armour.
🚨DEADLOCK BROKEN🚨
Ryker Evans gets one through on the power play to give us the lead late in the 3rd!#MarchOn | #REGvsMH pic.twitter.com/8VBQVanhgJ
— Regina Pats (@WHLPats) February 24, 2022
Ryker Evans let a point shot fly that beat the screened Tiger netminder. The powerplay goal was Evans’ 12th goal of the season giving the Pats a 1-0 lead late in the game. Cole Dubinsky and Tanner Howe picked up the assists on the marker.
Tigers pulled Bjorklund with just over two minutes left in the game.
Bedard made it 2-0 when he picked up a loose puck in the Tiger zone and fired home his 32nd into the empty Tiger goal at 18:49 to seal the win. The shots were 11-11 in the third period and 41-21 overall for the Pats.
Pyne made 11 saves in the third period winning.
“You couldn’t write a better story than what [Pyne] has done,” Muntain said. “And it’s not just with us. Earlier in the year, he got called up in the SJHL with Melville and he pitched a shutout there. So what is that four junior starts and he’s got three shutouts? Like I said you can’t write a better story than that.”
Bjorklund stopped 39 shots in the loss for the Tigers.
“[Bjorklund] was very, very good tonight,” Muntain said of Bjorklund’s game tonight. “That is probably one of the best goaltending performances I’ve seen this season. He almost stole it. If it wasn’t for our guys being super mature, they never got frustrated at any point in the hockey game that they couldn’t put any pucks past him. They just stuck with it. Kept sticking with the plan and finally we were able to put one past him.”
“We stuck to our game plan,” said Evans. “I thought we controlled the game pretty well, we were obviously getting pucks to the net, we knew one was going to bounce in some time. We stuck with it and obviously got rewarded.”
The announced attendance at the Brandt Centre was 3,760.
The Pats went 1-for-7 on the powerplay while going 3-for-3 killing penalties.
Patterings: John Paddock is still under the weather, so Brad Herauf ran the bench again in his absence… Logan Nijhoff missed the game after taking a hit early in the Monday Family Day tilt with the Broncos… Evans (GWG), Bjorklund (39 saves), and Bedard (1G-1A) were the three-star selections… The Pats’ next action is Friday, February 25, when they travel to Edmonton to face the number one ranked CHL club, the Oil Kings.
