By Les Lazaruk
The Saskatoon Blades transferred “compete level” and urgency from a Monday practice, that cost them the availability of a Top-nine forward, into a badly-needed victory on Tuesday.
It was the bridge city bunch who snapped scoreless and 1-1 ties in the second period, then held on for a 5-3 triumph over the Kootenay ICE before 2,861 fans at SaskTel Centre.
“We’ll take 57 (minutes of urgency and effort) over none. So, we’ll take that,” said Blades head coach Dean Brockman of the Blue and Gold’s 26th win of the season that snapped a modest, yet troubling, two-game losing skid. “We didn’t finish it off, but I thought our guys had a much stronger effort. We did a lot of things better. I won’t say we did them great, but we did them better. We made some adjustments on the fly and the guys responded to it.”
Monday’s 75-minute practice was laced with battle drills, designed to improve compete level, something that appeared to have been lost by the Blades in falling 2-0 at home to Red Deer and 5-2 in Prince Albert last week. The intense, physical session left 19-year-old right winger Caleb Fantillo sidelined. However, the rest of the group seemed to learn from the workout.
Michael Farren opened the scoring with a second period power play goal then tallied again to give the Blades a 2-1 lead after Colton Kroeker tied the score for the ICE. Saskatoon assumed a 3-1 lead before the second period was over when Bradly Goethals potted a rebound while the Bridge City Bunch was short-handed. Early in the third period, the blue and gold went up 4-1 when Max Gerlach scored off a breakaway.
“I don’t think (that I scored the winning goal, as it turned out) was the first thing going through my mind,” explained Gerlach. “I thought I had iced the game, kind of stunted their momentum. But, it just shows that no matter who we’re playing, we’ve got to make sure we play a full 60 minutes.”
Chase Wouters ended up potting the insurance marker into an empty Kootenay net with goaltender Matt Berlin on the bench for an extra attacker after Colton Veloso and Peyton Krebs tallied 52 seconds apart to make the score 4-3 with 1:54 remaining.
Otherwise, the Blades did what they needed to do, improving their record to 26-25-3 for 55 points, two ahead of Prince Albert with the 21-20-11 Raiders set to host 23-27-3 Kootenay on Wednesday evening. Nolan Maier won his 17th game in goal for Saskatoon as they out-shot the ICE 34-24.
The bridge city bunch open a three games-in-three nights weekend on Friday in Brandon against a stumbling Wheat Kings team that is still in third place in the WHL’s East Division but only two points ahead of Regina and eight clear of the Blue and Gold.
Pacman Points – The Blades were the better squad on special teams…scoring once on three power play chances while killing off all three Kootenay man advantages while notching their fifth shorthanded tally as a team. The ICE have allowed 13 shorthanded goals this season…the most of any WHL team.
Goethals snapped a 13-game goal-less drought for Saskatoon, becoming the sixth member of the bridge city bunch to hit double digits in goals for the season.
Besides Fantillo being sidelined with an upper-body injury, increasing the Blue and Gold’s “man-games lost” tally to 126, the Blades scratched forwards Brandon Machado and Tyler Lees…opting to dress seven defencemen and 11 forwards.
Kootenay were without 17-year-old goaltender Duncan McGovern, due to a one-game league suspension for being assessed a match penalty for intent to injure during last Saturday’s home loss to Swift Current. In that same game, the ICE lost 17-year-old forward Keenan Taphorn to an upper-body ailment. Otherwise, head coach James Patrick decided to sit defencemen Loeden Schoefler and Bobby Russell along with forward Sebastian Streu. Kootenay had 16-year-old Jesse Makaj dressed as the backup goaltender to Berlin. The ICE also called up 16-year-old left winger Blake Allan to make his WHL debut. The Humboldt, Sk., product plays for the Saskatoon Blazers of the Saskatchewan Midget AAA League.
Kootenay won 30 of 58 faceoffs, led by Michael King winning four of six trips to the dot. Saskatoon’s top man in the circle was Wouters, who captured possession on nine of 15 draws. The 17-year-old Lloydminster product has taken 1,003 faceoffs while playing in all 54 Blue and Gold contests this season.
No individual player had more than four shots on goal in the game. The bridge city bunch had Farren, Josh Paterson and Braylon Shmyr direct four shots-on-goal while Brett Davis paced the ICE with four shots-on-goal.
