Older Pats take over in 5-2 pre-season win

A youthful Brandon Wheat Kings club took an early lead but the older Regina Pats scored the next five goals en route to a 5-2 victory in Western Hockey League pre-season action at Brandt Centre on Friday.

Julien Maze sniped twice and Jace Egland, Caden Brown and Liam Pue also scored for Regina (1-1-0-0), with Brandon (0-1-0-0) receiving its goals from Easton Odut and Prabh Bhathal.

The teams meet again at Brandon’s Assiniboine Credit Union Place tonight at 6 p.m.

Brandon general manager and head coach Marty Murray said his club’s youth showed.

“They had a pretty heavy veteran lineup and we almost couldn’t have dressed a more inexperienced lineup,” Murray said. “When you see that you wonder how it’s going to go, and I thought in the first 10 minutes we were really good and the guys were jumping. Probably the power play — even though we haven’t worked on it — gave them some momentum and it was kind of downhill from there.

“It’s a learning experience obviously but our lack of experience probably showed in the last 50 minutes.”

With a handful of spots still up for grabs, Brandon skated without most of its veterans, including forwards Jaxon Jacobson, Caleb Hadland, Jordan Gavin, Carter Klippenstein, Luke Mistelbacher and Nick Johnson, defencemen Gio Pantelas, Dylan Ronald, Nigel Boehm, Grayson Burzynski and Merrek Arpin and goalies Jayden Kraus and Hudson Perry.

In fact, Brandon’s blue-liners on Friday had 16 total games of WHL experience, all from Cameron Allard as a callup last season.

Brandon opened the scoring four minutes 13 seconds into the opening frame. Brady Turko stripped Regina defenceman Ephram McNutt and moved the puck up the ice on a 3-on-1, with Odut knocking in his own rebound behind Regina goalie Taylor Tabashniuk.

Regina evened the game 12 minutes later on the power play when Egland tipped a shot by Maze through the five-hole of Brandon starting goalie Dylan McFadyen. Seven minutes into the middle frame, the Pats took their first lead on a backdoor goal by Brown. In a scheduled move, Brandon brought recently signed 15-year-old goaltender Joffrey Chan in midway through the second period.

The Pats put the game out of the reach in the third period when Maze scored twice and Pue also sniped, with the latter goal coming off a bullet shot on the power play.

Brandon added a consolation goal with 15.6 seconds left when Bhathal was set up by his draft-mate Chase Surkan.

“Training camp is one thing but when you’re playing against another team, that’s a whole different ballgame,” Murray said. “It was getting their feet wet because we had a lot of guys playing their first junior hockey tonight. There were some good positives to take out of it and I believe some learning experiences as well.”

McFadyen stopped 18 of 20 shots and Chan blocked 14 of 17 for the Wheat Kings, with Tabashniuk making 25 saves for the Pats.

Brandon went 0-for-3 on the power play, with Regina scoring twice in four chances.

ICINGS: McCreary brothers Brady and Easton Turko both played for Brandon, the first time they’ve been on the ice together since peewee … The Wheat Kings have also signed forwards Carson Ralph and Ahmad Fayed. Ralph left the game with an upper-body injury … Regina products Ethan Young and Chase Surkan were in the Brandon lineup playing against their former teammate Maddox Schultz … Brandon had won 10 pre-season games in a row coming into the game … Odut led the Wheat Kings with six shots on net … The game took two hours, eight minutes to play … In the faceoff circle, the teams tied 31-31. » pbergson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @PerryBergson