Wheat Kings dominate Rockets with 5-1 win

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This article was published 12/12/2015 (3774 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Brandon barrage led the Wheat Kings on Saturday as they dismantled the league-leading Kelowna Rockets with a 5-1 win at Westman Place on Saturday.

Four Brandon-raised players — Tyler Coulter, Tanner Kaspick, Connor Gutenberg and Ty Lewis — all scored as Brandon dominated a rematch of last season’s Western Hockey League final.

Interim head coach David Anning, in his third game running the bench with head coach and general manager Kelly McCrimmon away with Team Canada’s junior program, was happy with his team’s game after a subpar effort at home a night earlier in a 5-3 loss to the Lethbridge Hurricanes.

“I thought we responded well to last night’s game,” Anning said. “I thought we did a good job of being prepared and thought our dressing room was focused and energized. We had complete buy-in from everybody. When we talk about how we want to play, that’s pretty much what we’re looking for.”

With the win, Brandon (19-10-1-2) took over first place in the East Division as the Kamloops Blazers beat the Prince Albert Raiders 5-2. Kelowna fell to 23-7-1-0 but remains first overall in the league.

Tyler Coulter scored the first goal of the game for Brandon 7:30 into the first period, bringing teddy bears raining down onto the ice for the team’s annual Teddy Bear Toss. Coulter’s goal came on a nice deflection of a Kale Clague shot during a Brandon power play.

The cleanup prompted an 11-minute delay.

In a period the Wheat Kings dominated, outshooting the Rockets 25-10, Tanner Kaspick made it a 2-0 lead when the puck squirted out to him in the slot. He deked Whistle and then managed to knock in a second rebound.

Garrett Armour made it 3-0 just 2:27 into the second period with his first as a Wheat King off a deflection of a Colton Waltz shot.

After Gutenberg scored two minutes later on another deflection, Kelowna coach Brad Ralph had seen enough, replacing starting goalie Jackson Whistle with Michael Herringer.

It was the seventh career meeting between starting goaltenders Jordan Papirny of the Wheat Kings and Whistle of the Rockets, with Whistle winning the first six, including all four in the WHL final.

“We were talking about that in the room before, how in my career we’ve never beat Kelowna,” Papirny said. “We definitely had that chip on our shoulder to go out there and make a statement.”

Lewis also scored in the second period when he tipped a power-play blast from the point, putting his team up 5-0.

Lucas Johansen broke the shutout with eight minutes left with a shorthanded goal, the second in two games that Brandon has surrendered.

Papirny made his best save of the evening when he stuck his glove and grabbed a shot on a long Kelowna breakaway. 

Kaspick said after the game that scoring the ugly goals from the traffic areas count just as much.

“Not all of the goals are pretty,” Kaspick said. “They don’t ask how, they ask how many. I just think it’s an example of guys getting to the net and really bearing down. Obviously we were rewarded.”

The game had the same teams as last year’s league final, but 18 players who participated in Game 4 last May weren’t on the ice Saturday.

Rockets coach Brad Ralph was disappointed with his team’s start. 

“We took two tripping penalties in the first 10 minutes and that’s not a way to start a hockey game,” Ralph said. “It put us on our heels and they capitalized with a couple. They were shooting pucks well and getting pucks toward the net. They were going hard to the net.”

ICINGS: The Wheat Kings only dressed 17 skaters, with G Logan Thompson and F Stelio Mattheos out with injuries and D Ivan Provorov, F John Quenneville and F Jayce Hawryluk at their national junior team camps. Kelowna was also playing shorthanded because of junior camps, with forwards Nick Merkley, Rourke Chartier, Tomas Soustal and Calvin Thurkauf away … Oakbank rookie forward Tanner Wishnowski was the sole Manitoban in Kelowna’s lineup … The only Brandon-raised players not to get a goal were Duncan Campbell, who, coincidentally, scored the teddy bear goal in 2014, and James Shearer … Attendance was 4,785. 

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