Alexander Alexeyev loves hockey and scoring goals, Rebels win in overtime.

Scoring hasn’t always come easy for the Rebels defence.

It has been since the 2015-16 that a defender in the Red and Black scored 20 goals. His name was Colton Bobyk and that was the year the Rebels hosted the Memorial Cup.

Could we see 20 this year from another defenseman? Alexander Alexeyev is certainly going to try.

Last night, half of the offense came from the defense.

Early, it was Carson Sass scoring his first of the season on the power play. Reese Johnson drew a penalty against Jonathan Smart that would give the Rebels the man advantage.

The first power play unit looked very threatening but were unable to score. It was the Rebels second unit that would give the team the 1-0 lead with just 11 seconds left on the man advantage. Sass collected a pass from Jacob Herauf and hammered a shot past Ice goaltender Duncan McGovern.

It would take eight minutes and 18 seconds to for the Ice to get their first shot on the Rebels net including one minute and 47 seconds of power play time.

There would only be penalties for the remaining 15 minutes and five seconds of the first period as the referees were playing the role of policemen to a tee.

Their whistles didn’t go away to start the second period either. “We took five minor penalties in the first 24 minutes of the game. Certain guys kill (penalties) other guys play on the power play and five-on-five. I thought certain guys played a lot in the first 24 minutes and other guys didn’t play much. It kind of took those guys out of the game and the other guys got a little tired,” said head coach Brent Sutter about the early goings on.

The good news for the Rebels was that 11 seconds into their first penalty early in the period Brandon Hagel caught a pass while streaking down the win. He made no mistake in snapping his shot into the top corner over the blocker of Duncan McGovern and making it 2-0 Red Deer.

The bad news was, a second penalty after the goal would give Kootenay 55 seconds of 5-on-3 time.

An absolute rifle of a shot caught Ethan Anders up high and the trainer would need to come out. It was a tense few moments for the 4405 Rebels faithful as their number one goaltender looked a little shaken up by the shot.

He would stay in between the pipes for the duration.

The Ice needed just 26 seconds of the 5-on-3 to slide a puck under Anders pad. It was a goal he surely wished he had back. A pass from Martin Bodak found its way to Jaeger White and he was able to just slide a quick shot under the shaken Anders.

It would then only take 16 more seconds for the Ice to make it even at two. A hard snap shot from Brett Davis in the slot clanged off the post and went in behind Anders. The assists went to Cameron Hausinger and highly rated 2019 draft eligible Peyton Krebs.

“Kootenay they just stayed with their game, kept doing things right and they are a team that is very well coached and well disciplined.” said Sutter about letting the Ice back into the game with penalties and tired players.

The period would end with three straight Ice penalties, but the Rebels potent power play could not find pay dirt.

The teams would play a much more disciplined third period and the refs put the whistles away. Only Josh Tarzwell would earn him self a two minute break in the sin bin. The Rebels would come away unscathed from his discretion.

With less than three minutes left in regulation, Oleg Zaytsev scored a crazy behind the back no-look goal to give the Rebels the lead. Zaytsev corralled a rebound to make it 3-2.

But it was short lived.

Jaeger White scored on an absolute rocket of a shot just 36 seconds after the Rebels took the lead.

The teams would head to overtime and the home side would score their second win in as many nights.

Defenseman Alexander Alexeyev received the puck in the neutral zone and skated into the Ice end of the rink. The Ice players were focused on Brandon Hagel and allowed Alexeyev to skate past everything and everyone. “It was kind of a weird goal cause they just let me skate.” said the overtime goal scorer when asked about his goal.

He would get right in front of the net unscathed.

His shot would get past McGovern to give the Rebels another home ice win.  “You know overtime goals are really exciting and they make me really happy. You can tell by my celebration. It was an awesome game at the end, an awesome feeling.” an exuberant Alexeyev continued post-game.

The team is now 5-1-0-0 on home ice.

Rebel Yell.. despite the early lead in shots on goal for the Rebels, the teams would end up tied in shots at 32. The Ice were 2-for-6 on the power play, the Rebels 1-for-5. Cameron Hausinger was the best Ice player in the faceoff dot, going 9-for-15, while Resse Johnson was 21-of-27. Brett Davis lead all skaters by a wide margin with 8 shots on net. Next action for Red Deer is Tuesday night when they host the Calgary Hitmen, they then head to Medicine Hat for a Wednesday tilt with the Tigers.