Wheat Kings a win away from WHL final

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This article was published 27/04/2016 (3620 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

RED DEER, Alta. — Jordan Papirny and the Brandon Wheat Kings responded in a big way on Wednesday, beating the Red Deer Rebels 4-2 in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference final at the Enmax Centrium.

One night after the Brandon netminder surrendered four goals on nine shots and the Rebels built a 5-0 lead en route to a 6-2 win, it was a much better Brandon team that now leads its best-of-seven Western Hockey League playoff series 3-1.

“As a goalie, things like that happen,” Papirny said. “People are going to forget about that and the only thing that people are going to remember is how you respond the next night. That was kind of what I was thinking about going into the game, to respond really well and be mentally strong back there. The boys did an awesome job tonight.”

Brandon has a chance to wrap up the series in Game 5 at Westman Place on Friday. Game time is 7:30 p.m.

Wednesday’s contest didn’t follow the script to start.

Red Deer opened the scoring 3:54 into the game when Kale Clague sent the puck in front of the net on the backhand, missing his defensive partner Mitch Wheaton but not Rebels forward Grayson Pawlenchuk, who quickly fired it past Papirny. 

Brandon captain Macoy Erkamps tied it less than two minutes later when the overage defenceman pinched into the slot and fanned on his first shot but his second shot found its way through Red Deer starter Rylan Toth and dribbled just over the goal-line.

Brandon appeared to make it made it 2-1 a couple of minutes later when Erkamps’ slapshot from the point went in off Nolan Patrick’s skate, but after a lengthy video review, the goal was disallowed.

Brandon took its first lead since arriving in Red Deer with four minutes left in the opening period when, after lengthy pressure in the Rebels zone in which the Wheat Kings actually changed some players, Jayce Hawryluk’s shot bounced off Toth and onto the stick of John Quenneville. The New Jersey Devils’ first-round pick from Edmonton tapped it in for his 12th in 15 playoff games.

Wheat Kings head coach and general manager Kelly McCrimmon said it was a nice response by his players

“It was a good bounce-back game for our team,” McCrimmon said. “We were better than in Game 4 then we were in Game 3. We had some things go wrong in the first period. We gave up the first goal, we had a goal disallowed which I sure felt was a goal, but we pushed our way through it. I thought we played a solid game.”

The Wheat Kings outshot the Rebels in a scoreless second period, but Red Deer forward Jake DeBrusk, a Boston Bruins first rounder, scored on the power play 17 seconds into the third period to tie the game 2-2.

Overage forward Tim McGauley restored the lead for Brandon 6:36 into the third period off a nice pass from Quenneville on a three-on-two.

With the Red Deer net empty, Papirny made a couple of key saves and Tanner Kaspick salted the game away with an empty-net goal with 55 seconds left.

“We needed to come out hard and play better than we did yesterday,” McGauley said. “I thought our group definitely did that tonight.”

The Rebels felt they took a big step back after a 6-2 win on Tuesday. Head coach Brent Sutter didn’t feel his team had much push and felt the score flattered his side. 

DeBrusk agreed with his coach.

"They were better than us in pretty much every area," DeBrusk said. "Without Tother in net, it would have got out of hand pretty quick.

"Our backs are up against the wall and we need to be better. We need to go into Brandon and play our style and win some game."

Toth stopped 39 shots for Red Deer, while Papirny made 34 saves for Brandon.

“I thought we had a really good start,” Papirny said. “It was kind of a tough bounce behind the net when it squeezed out to their guy but I thought we did a really good job of responding. We didn’t let that bother us and stuck with the process.”

ICINGS: The Wheat Kings went with the same lineup again, scratching D Schael Higson, F Garrett Armour, F Caiden Daley and D/F Mark Matsuba … The Rebels scratched F Conner Bleackley and F Reese Johnson with injuries. G Dawson Weatherill, D Carson Sass, D Ethan Sakowich, D Austin Shmoorkoff and F Austin Pratt also sat … The two goals in seven seconds by the Rebels on Tuesday was one second off the league record, which was set in 1979 when Brad McCrimmon and Laurie Boschman scored six seconds apart for the Wheat Kings .… Elsewhere in the WHL, the Chynoweth family has purchased 24.5 per cent of the Kootenay Ice from Rob and Scott Niedermayer, giving them the full 100 per cent stake in the club.

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