(Medicine Hat, AB) The Medicine Hat Tigers had to be kicking themselves in Edmonton on Sunday night. They were just 20 minutes away from putting the Central Division champion Edmonton Oil Kings down 0-2 on the road.
Then the Oil Kings finally seemed to solve Tigers goalie Mads Sogaard a little bit and came back in the third to even up the series as it headed back to Medicine Hat.
That groove the Oil Kings had found in the final period of Sunday’s game, ended Tuesday with a thud in Game 3.
The 6-foot-7 Tigers goalie stopped all 32 Edmonton shots he saw and five different skaters found the net for Medicine Hat in a 5-0 win.
“He’s had a really strong series so far. He’s been on top of his game – making key saves at crucial times in the game,” Tigers head coach Shaun Clouston told tigershockey.com when asked about Sogaard.
The Tigers now lead the best-of-seven series, two games to one with Game 4 coming Wednesday in Medicine Hat.
The home team came out energized in the first period. They were even more so after their 15-year-old rookie Cole Sillinger netted his first career WHL goal.
Sillinger took a feed from Linus Nassen into the Edmonton zone and made a nifty move to get the puck in space. He then sniped a shot by Dylan Myskiw‘s left shoulder for the 1-0 lead.
“It was a solid game. We played hard. We did a lot of good things. We played well as a team. We got contributions from all four lines, all six D and our goaltender,” Clouston said.
Midway through the second period, James Hamblin buried his second of the series for a two-goal Tigers lead. While shorthanded, he got a feed from Eric Van Impe out of the zone and flipped the puck to himself in space. Trey Fix-Wolansky fell to the ice, giving Medicine Hat’s leading regular season scorer a breakaway. Hamblin beat Myskiw easily and the Oil Kings were in a 2-0 hole.
“We got some good bounces tonight. Sometimes when you work really hard you get bounces but we got some good breaks,” Clouston said.
Van Impe then set up another Tigers teammate to make it 3-0.
He read an outlet pass perfectly at the Edmonton blue line, picked it off and swiftly fired the puck to Elijah Brown in alone on Myskiw.
Brown tried to work a shot free but with Edmonton’s defenders recovering lost the handle. Fortunately for him, the puck still slipped between Myskiw’s pads.
If Edmonton had hopes for a big third period comeback, they would have those dashed quickly.
Just 1:55 into the final frame, with the teams skating four-a-side, Tyler Preziuso and Ryan Chyzowski burst in on a two-on-one rush off the rebound of a big Sogaard save.
Chyzowski’s first shot was stopped by Myskiw, but he went to the ice and slid a backhand by the goalie for his first of the post-season and a 4-0 Tigers lead. That goal ended Myskiw’s night. The Oil Kings goalie stopped 19-of-23.
Todd Scott came on in relief. He would end up letting in the game’s final goal and turned away 10-of-11 in total.
Hayden Ostir capped off the big night for the Tigers with his second of the series.
Game Notes:
-Nassen leads all scorers in the series through three games with four points. Hamblin, Chyzowski and Logan Christensen each have three.
–Josh Williams leads the Oil Kings with two points. He is the only Oil King with more than one.
-Sogaard has stopped 118-of-123 total shots for a 0.959 save percentage.
-Myskiw has allowed 11 goals on 72 shots for a 0.873 save percentage.
-Edmonton was 0-for-2 on the power play, while Medicine Hat was 0-for-6. The Tigers are now 2-of-10, while the Oil Kings are 1-for-7 in the series.
-Hamblin went 12-of-25 at the faceoff dot, while Chyzowski was 8-for-17, Christensen went 6-for-13 and Brown was 6-of-10.
-For Edmonton, Andrew Fyten was 18-of-29, Scott Atkinson was 6-for-15, Vince Loschiavo was 7-for-13 and Liam Keeler went 7-of-12.
-Medicine Hat was led in shots by Sillinger’s six, while Edmonton had Loschiavo lead the way with six of his own.
