Wheat Kings weather Hitmen storm, win 5-3

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The short-staffed Brandon Wheat Kings received goals from a pair of unlikely sources in the third period as they earned a 5-3 victory over the Calgary Hitmen in Western Hockey League action at Westoba Place on Friday.

Caleb Hadland, Brett Hyland, Carter Klippenstein, Jackson DeSouza and Jaxon Jacobson all scored for Brandon (27-21-5-1), with Ethan Moore, Dax Williams and Oliver Tulk replying for Calgary (22-23-6-1) in front of a crowd of 2,467.

“This was a huge win,” DeSouza said. “We had to stop the bleeding a bit from the past couple of games. It’s going into crunch time and these are the games you want to play. They’re a sneaky team over there. They’re young and they won’t quit so they kept us on our toes, but at the end of the day, we got the two points.”

Sixth-place Brandon now leads ninth-place Calgary by nine points coming into the game in the Eastern Conference playoff race.

Brandon head coach and general manager Marty Murray, who was celebrating his 49th birthday, said it was an uneven effort which turned out right.

“We were up 3-1 and you have to have that killer instinct,” Murray said. “We let them back into the game, but thankfully we had a big shorthanded goal by DeSouza and then a big insurance marker by Jacobson.”

Brandon skated without four forwards, Roger McQueen (upper body, day to day), Nick Johnson (upper body, week to week), Hayden Wheddon (upper body, day to day) and Joby Baumuller (upper body, day to day), and called up prospects Jacobson and Brady Turko of McCreary to fill out its forward ranks.

“It’s nice when you can call those reinforcements up and not just think of them as bodies,” Murray said. “You think of them as guys who can contribute. I thought they were both really good tonight.”

The Wheat Kings were still forced to dress 11 forwards and seven defencemen.

The two youngsters actually created the first Grade A chance of the game when Jacobson set up Turko on a two-on-one on their first shift, and Turko narrowly missed the net behind Calgary goalie Ethan Buenaventura of Winnipeg.

At the other end, Calgary clanged a rebound off the post behind Brandon goalie Carson Bjarnason soon after, but the game remained 0-0.

Brandon opened the scoring 10 minutes 11 seconds into the opening frame on an odd goal. The Wheat Kings broke the puck into the Hitmen zone and a pass into the slot to Hadland was knocked away by Calgary forward Tyson Greenway. The puck dropped behind Hadland, who skated two strides, turned and fired a quick, no-look backhand into the net near the post under Buenaventura’s glove.

“Honestly, it wasn’t fancy,” Hadland said with a chuckle. “It was just second effort on the puck. It was a little stick lift and then I just spun around and whacked it on the backhand and it found a way in.”

The two Wheat Kings prospects also played a key role when Brandon extended the lead.

Jacobson undressed a Calgary defenceman going to the net, with Buenaventura making a terrific save. Turko got another shot off the rebound and the puck squirted across to the far side of the net, where Hyland batted it in for his 30th goal of the season. Turko’s assist was his first WHL point.

The momentum took a huge turn in the other direction in a strange second period.

It took Calgary just 65 seconds to get back into the game after a Brandon turnover in the neutral zone. The Hitmen broke back in on a two-on-one and Moore chose to shoot, beating Bjarnason over his blocker to make it 2-1.

Soon after, the fire alarm went off in the entire Keystone Centre, and as staff rushed to figure out the source of the problem, play was delayed and the teams eventually started back to their dressing rooms. They stopped when the alarm went off, but it was quickly determined the fire alarm had been pulled by a youngster and it was a false alarm.

After a delay of several minutes, the game resumed, although the scoreboard briefly belched out the smoke they use during player introductions.

Brandon restored the two-goal lead at the 4:54 mark on a nice feed by Seth Tansem to Klippenstein in the slot.

“I saw an open lane there and Tansem made a really nice pass to me,” Klippenstein said. “I thought I had to bury that one so I made sure I did.”

The alarm started again soon after, prompting another much shorter delay. Calgary once again responded, this time off a zone entry when the puck went back high to Williams, who fired a shot that beat Bjarnason cleanly through traffic to make it a 3-2 game.

The Wheat Kings took back-to-back minors midway through the period — the second on Hyland’s gloved punch to the face of defenceman Aleksey Chichkin — and it proved costly when Tulk deflected the puck into the net off Carter Yakemchuk’s point shot to tie the game 3-3.

The Wheat Kings took their fourth penalty of the game 59 seconds into the third period, and Bjarnason denied Greenway on a partial breakaway to keep it tied.

That was a key moment, because Wiens skated the puck into the Hitmen zone and the big defenceman DeSouza chugged up the ice to join him on a two-on-one. Wiens lifted a pass over the stick of the Calgary defenceman and DeSouza put the puck past Buenaventura as he went sliding into the boards head first. It was his first goal as a Wheat King.

“I saw the puck fumbling on the wall when he turned back up and luckily he got a stick on it and Wiener read the play really well and we got a two-on-one,” DeSouza said. “It was beautiful feed by him. I put it on my backhand to get the goalie moving a little bit and at the end of the day I ran into him and put the puck in the net. It was a good feeling.”

That was magnified by the reception he got at the bench.

“That felt awesome,” he added. “Just to see the emotion on all the boys’ faces meant more to me than scoring the goal.”

The hosts restored the two-goal lead 8:44 into the third period when Jacobson was set up by Hyland, came in against a Calgary defender, made room for his shot and then fired in his third goal of the season.

Calgary’s Greenway took a double minor for high sticking with 4:32 remaining, which seemed like it essentially ended Calgary’s comeback attempt. That is until Klippenstein took a spearing major with 3:01 remaining — he’ll likely face a suspension for it — making it a four-on-four battle for much of the rest of the game.

Calgary pulled their goalie with 2:59 remaining for a five-on-four man advantage and pressed, but weren’t able to draw any closer before the final buzzer.

It was a very different outcome than an 8-0 thrashing the Wheat Kings took in Calgary on Jan. 26.

“We needed a big bounce-back today,” Hadland said. “We needed to show them how we play, and in the third period, we really stepped up and came to the plate and showed we are a playoff team and we can take on any team in this league.”

Bjarnason made 29 saves for the Wheat Kings, with Buenaventura stopping 21 shots for the Hitmen.

Brandon went 0-for-3 on the power play, with Calgary scoring once in eight chances.

“It’s huge,” Murray said. “We talked about it before the game. I think we’re nine points up on them now. When you’re inside six points, that’s a weekend. It was a big win for us.”

ICINGS: Hadland and Rylen Roersma led the Wheat Kings with three shots each on net … The game took two hours, 30 minutes to play … On their sixth penalty kill, Hadland blocked a shot which knocked the blade off his skate and managed to push his way back to the bench with his other leg to allow another penalty killer to replace him … On another kill, Quinn Mantei broke his stick, with Hyland handing him his and after biding his time, raced to the bench for another stick … In the faceoff circle, Calgary won 33-31 … Brandon hosts the Saskatoon Blades on Monday afternoon at 2 p.m.

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