Wheat Kings open road trip with win

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This article was published 22/10/2014 (4085 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Brandon Wheat Kings can thank their power play for their 7-4 Western Hockey League win over the host Prince George Cougars on Wednesday night.

The Wheat Kings went 4-for-7 with the man advantage in the opening game of their West Coast road trip. Rookie Nolan Patrick scored two goals and added an assist, with all three points coming on the power play.

"It was a big part of our offence," Wheat Kings head coach and general manager Kelly McCrimmon said. "We had a lot of opportunities and I wish our power play could have been a little bit better for us early, but as the night went on we made some good plays in the zone and were able to capitalize."

Rihards Bukarts also scored two goals — one of them into an empty net — and added an assist as Brandon (9-2-1-0) maintained its four-point lead over the Swift Current Broncos in the East Division and moved into a tie with the Medicine Hat Tigers for first place in the Eastern Conference. Reid Duke, Tyler Coulter and Ivan Provorov also scored for the Wheat Kings.

The Cougars had a solid night on the power play themselves, going 2-for-7. Jared Bethune scored his first WHL goal and picked up an assist for Prince George (7-6-0-0), with Brad Morrison, Chance Braid and Chase Witala rounding out the Cougars’ scoring.

Morrison opened the scoring on a Prince George power play, but Bukarts and Duke responded before the end of the first period.

"I thought it was important on the road to be leading after one if you can," McCrimmon said. "The first period was a really funny period because of all the special teams. Certainly our team, I didn’t feel like we had real good tempo to our game because of the number of special teams, but at least we were leading after one so we could put the period behind us and get ready for the second."

Brandon opened up two-goal lead in the second period and a three-goal advantage in the third, but both times Prince George battled to get back within one. The final time the Cougars mounted a threat came midway through the third period, when Bethune and Witala scored goals 1:08 apart to cut the lead to 5-4, but again the Wheat Kings’ power play gave them some breathing room as Patrick tapped in a rebound for the first two-goal game of his WHL career.

"(Patrick) made a great play on the power-play goal by Reid Duke as well," McCrimmon said, recalling a nice three-way passing play that set up Duke’s go-ahead goal. "He was real good. Nolan played really well all night. He was skating real well. I thought he had confidence even before he scored a goal in the second, and I thought he was on his way to a real good game and he played real well."

The Wheat Kings continue their road trip on Friday night, when they will take on the Kamloops Blazers (8:30, CKLQ).

ONE-TIMERS: Brandon G Jordan Papirny and Prince George G Ty Edmonds each made 32 saves … Bukarts extended his point-scoring streak to eight games (six goals, 11 assists), one short of the WHL’s longest this season. RW Peter Quenneville, in his first game as the Wheat Kings’ captain, had two assists to stretch his point-scoring streak to six games (three goals, eight assists) … Brandon scratched LW Richard Nejezchleb, who was returned by the AHL’s Hartford Wolf Pack on Wednesday, C John Quenneville (upper body, day-to-day), LW Ty Lewis (broken arm, week-to-week), D Mark Taraschuk and D Mark Matsuba … The Wheat Kings retained their No.6 spot in this week’s Canadian Hockey League rankings. The Kelowna Rockets (first), Medicine Hat Tigers (fifth) and Everett Silvertips (10th) also remained in the same spots as last week. Brandon will play Kelowna on Saturday and will conclude this road trip against Medicine Hat on Saturday, Nov. 1 … The Victoria Royals acquired G Jayden Sittler, 18, from the Kootenay Ice on Wednesday for a sixth-round pick in the 2015 WHL bantam draft.

» rhenders@brandonsun.com