Raiders “experience” Pats on Saturday night

4780 fans came to “Experience Regina” night at the Brandt Centre, Ty Kolle sent them home happy. Kolle was the only successful shooter in the shootout for the Pats 4-3 victory.

Post game, the newest Pat, Carter Chorney said “The boys are kind of fired up (with) Jay and Dan here.” He’s referring to TSN’s Jay Onrait and Dan O’Toole.

In 2018 the Pats released a video of players singing the Experience Regina song, while wearing Experience Regina shirts the team had gotten made, and the TV celebrities took a liking to both. The wheels had been set in motion, culminating Saturday night as Jay and Dan hosted the game.

The Raiders provided the opposition on the night. The Raiders are first place in the division and second in the league.

Max Paddock, who claimed first star of the night, said, “we’ve always had the mentality that we’re never going to back down no matter who we’re playing.”

Prince Albert got on the board first with a power-play goal from Kaiden Guhle. Guhle jumped on a rebound off Max Paddock’s left pad and deposited behind a sprawling Paddock. Regina responded just over three minutes later. In a very similar goal, Ty Kolle potted a big rebound off Boston Bilous from an Austin Pratt shot.

Less than two minutes later, Carter Chorney deflected a Tyson Feist point shot past Boston Bilous.

Carter Chorney
(Photo – Reginapats.com)

Dave Struch on Chorney: “Right from practice, (the) last two practices, into the game tonight and you can see he’s excited to be here. You can see his commitment to the team. I was fortunate to have him at the Under 17 summer camp here a few years ago. So I had an idea, familiarity of who he is, what kind of player he’s going to be. He got to Swift Current, he put up some pretty good numbers for power forward. We’re obviously hoping that we can tap into a little bit of that, we saw it tonight. His role is going to be welcomed and expanded as we move forward here.”

With the Pats up 2-1 after the first period, the attention of the fans turned to Jay and Dan. The lineup to meet the stars stretched far and wide.

Early in the second period, Garret Wright forced a turnover behind the Prince Albert net and was able to feed a wide open Logan Nijhoff in the slot and he made no mistake, giving the Pats a 3-1 lead.

Reece Vitelli responded for the Raiders, as he was sent in a breakaway and got a shot past Max Paddock’s glove.

The third period has been an issue for the team. Games have gotten away from them. Aliaksei Protas tied up the game for the Raiders at the six minute mark of the period, which may have sewn a seed of doubt for the Pats. They seemed to respond to take the lead off goal by Ty Kolle, but the goal went to review. It was deemed a hand pass as Boston Bilous hit Austin Pratt with a clearing attempt, who then knocked the puck down towards the net. Bilous stopped it but it was laying there for Kolle who put it in to give the Pats the lead, but to no avail.

Struch on the third period: “Resiliency for me, I think is probably the best word for it. As good and as hard as we’ve played for the last nine games. Our work ethic has been so consistent, our team game. We make mistakes for sure, but we play a good team game. finishing a game off, going through and playing against good teams has been difficult for us because other teams have real good players. When they work hard, it’s hard for us to win hockey games. Tonight our team played very resilient hockey.”

Max Paddock
(Photo-Lucas Chudleigh Apollo Multimedia)

The game headed to overtime,. Both teams had a shortened opportunity on the man advantage, but neither capitalized.

Max Paddock made all three saves in the shootout, and Ty Kolle scored a five-hole goal for the Pats to take the win.

Paddock commented post game on the shootout, “we do a lot of shootouts at the end of practice. So I think that helps a little bit. You just got to read and react.”

Pats Stats

The Raiders had the only power-play goal of the game, on eight tries. The Pats were 0-for-4

Regina’s Max Paddock made 33 saves on 36 shots. Prince Albert’s Boston Bilous was 24-for-27.

Ty Kolle now has goals in back-to-back games and points in three straight.

With a goal tonight Aliaksei Protas is now second in league scoring.

The Raiders’ Spencer Moe saw his career-high seven game point streak ended on Saturday evening.

The Pats are back on the Brandt Centre ice Tuesday to make up the cancelled game from Nov 8th versus the Swift Current Broncos. Calgary is in town the next night.