The Kootenay Ice got back on track on the road Saturday night with a gritty 3-2 win over the Medicine Hat Tigers to halt their four-game slid.
The Ice returned the favour after losing last night by ruining the Tigers Teddy Bear Toss night on goals from John Neibrandt, with his 1st of the season, Brock Montgomery, with his 10th and the captain Drew Czerwonka in his 200th career WHL game with the game-winner with less than five minutes to play. The goal was Czerwonka's 9th.
Nathan Lieuwen stopped 31 of 33 shots in a nice bounce-back effort following last night's rare off-night.
The Ice were missing Max Reinhart at Team Canada's selection camp, Spencer Wand (healthy) and surprisingly, 20-year-old forward Joe Antilla, who was also a healthy scratch. I haven't got word why as of yet.
The Tigers were missing G Tyler Bunz who is at the selection camp.
Emerson Etem and Tyler Cox scored for the Tigers.
Hands-up all those who had Brock Montgomery at the 10-goal mark before Christmas and ahead of Czerwonka. Thought so. Sure, Czerwonka's fought some injury issues but Montgomery's secondary scoring has been a pleasant surprise.
Rookie Jaedon Descheneau notched a couple of helpers on the club's first two goals as the fourth line were in on the game's first goal.
The Ice get their 20th win of the season and improve to 20-9-1-2 and 43 points, keeping pace with the Moose Jaw Warriors (45 points) and Edmonton Oil Kings (44 points), who both won Saturday.
The Red Deer Rebels, minus D Alex Petrovic and D Matt Dumba who are Team Canada's camp and also could be missing G Patrik Bartosak who was injured a couple of games back for the Rebels. They've also went into a 12-game losing tailspin before their game Sunday against Prince Albert.
6 comments:
Some questions on last nights game. How does Kessy get away with running Lu. twice? Why do we come back with 4 rookies after scoring the go ahead goal 2-1? Do the forwards think that one of the main 4 def should be stepping up and fighting when Lu gets run? Very exciting game to watch last night but we were lucky to get the 2 pts.
if one of them stepped up and did something stupid, medicine hat gets a powerplay and BAM, we lose the two points. thats how I see it.
As for the coaching, CK is just fine, he is afterall, unlike you, behind the bench of a WHL team. A credential you could only dream of having.
He knows what he is doing there, and has valuable insight from two other qualified assistants that obviously agree with what goes on on the bench.
I think I'll take giving up a pp goal and the 2 pts to losing the chl's number one goalie to a cheap shot. Oh, you probably also think Lu should fight his own battles. Yes, thats what he did last night. CK is doing fine and his support staff, but I'm getting tired of only hearing about the players who make mistakes.
they are a roster of kids with no expextations to repeat a championship run, but here are some people complaing they are losing to teams expected to be much much better than them. And beating teams that actually are better. Its pretty normal. The players that are young get a lot of ice time with this roster so of course you will hear a tonne of what they do wrong. they are rookies, and they are learning.
Lets not kid ourselves. This roster is built for two years from now and these mistakes need to happen now in order to succeed then.
they are playing their hearts out as a team and doing more than what is expected and once again over acheiving as a whole. Great to see, but lets not put the weight of the world on them to keep going and going like they were.
GO ICE GO!!!
Brian
It's great seeing Montgomery put up those numbers-The coaches confidence has turned his career around. There's still a couple player's we have capable of doing the same if a little confidence went their way.
Will Max and dumba play tonight?
Post a Comment