Wheat Kings rally to beat Pats 7-4

Brandon Wheat Kings rookie forward Chase Surkan had a hat trick in his hometown and Caleb Hadland and Joby Baumuller each scored twice as they rallied to beat the Regina Pats 7-4 in Western Hockey League action at Brandt Centre on Friday.

Julien Maze, Jace Egland, Liam Pue and Ruslan Karimov replied for Regina (9-16-2-1) in front of a crowd of 3,250.

Brandon head coach and general manager Marty Murray, whose club improved to 13-11-1-0, said it was nice end to a game that didn’t start well.

“We’ll take the two points,” Murray said with a chuckle. “It wasn’t real pretty. Regina coming off that West Coast trip had some time to charge the batteries. We knew they were going to come out hard and we were certainly on our heels. If it wasn’t for (goalie Jayden) Kraus, we might have had a pretty big hole to come out of. It was kind of uneventful and we didn’t get a lot done, and then after Hadland scored, we kind of woke up.”

Regina struck first when they capitalized on an early power play after Maze cashed in from the slot on a quick shot that beat Kraus six minutes 35 seconds into the game.

In the most newsworthy moment of the first period, Brandon forward Jordan Gavin took a delay-of-game penalty, his first minor in three years, with the last on Dec. 3, 2022. Brandon killed it, only to take another two minutes later.

“I think there were some smiles but it obviously wasn’t the best of times,” Murray said of Gavin’s infraction for sending the puck over the glass. “It’s never a great time to take a penalty but maybe if you’re up 5-1 you can razz him a little bit but in real time we were struggling.”

“I actually gave him a bit of a hard time and called him a goon,” Murray added with a chuckle. “It’s been a long time. It’s his first penalty as a Wheat King.”

With the benefit of three power plays and a dominant performance five-on-five, the Pats built an 18-2 lead in shots in the first 17 minutes.

Even so, Surkan was found at the side of the net by Carter Klippenstein on Brandon’s first power play and the visitors improbably tied the game despite being outshot 18-4 at that point and 22-6 in the period.

The second period started even worse for the Wheat Kings.

Regina retook the lead 2:11 into the second period when Brandon turned the puck over in the neutral zone and Egland put a perfectly placed shot over the glove of Kraus off the rush, and less than two minutes, a turnover deep in the zone cost them when Pue sniped.

Turn-about is fair play, and when the Pats made a mistake of their own in the neutral zone, Luke Mistelbacher carried the puck into the Regina zone and fired a shot on Pats goalie Marek Schlenker. Surkan picked up the rebound, was denied and then shovelled the puck into the open net for his second of the game to pull his team back within a goal at 3-2.

With the teams playing four-on-four early in the third period, Gavin made a beautiful feed across the slot to Klippenstein but the Minnesota Wild prospect rang a shot off the iron, and Baumuller narrowly missed the net on a short breakaway soon after as the Wheat Kings began to flex their offensive muscle.

The Wheat Kings finally tied the game again with 7:06 remaining in regulation when Hadland picked off a pass and fired a shot from the hash marks that beat Schlenker cleanly. That opened the floodgates.

Just 58 seconds later, Baumuller broke down the wing and fired a shot that Schlenker partially stopped but the puck bounced back off the end boards and then caromed out, hit the goalie and dropped into the net to give Brandon its first lead at 4-3.

They made it a two-goal lead when Gavin found Surkan with a cross-seam pass on the power play and he buried it with 4:02 left.

“He’s just so smart,” Murray said of Surkan. “He gets in areas that goal scorers know to go.”

Just 37 seconds after that, Baumuller drove to the net and converted on a pass from Nick Johnson for his second goal of the game.

Baumuller took a penalty after the goal and the Pats forward Karimov scored on the power play when he picked a up a loose puck in front and deposited it between the legs of Kraus.

Regina pulled the goalie with 2:05 left, and Jordan made an unselfish feed from the boards to Hadland for an empty netter to complete the scoring.

Kraus made 36 saves for the Wheat Kings, with Schlenker stopping 19 shots for the Pats.

Brandon went 2-for-4 on the power play, with Regina scoring twice in five chances.

“You could just feel it,” Murray said of the five goals in the final seven minutes. “Hads got us going and you could just see we had some life on the bench. We were seven minutes from coming out of here with a loss and Hads gave us some life.”

ICINGS: Brandon skated without injured D Merrek Arpin, D Adam Hlinsky, F Ryan Boyce, F Easton Odut, and F Jaxon Jacobson, so they dressed 11 forwards and seven defencemen … Mistelbacher led the Wheat Kings with six shots on net … The game took two hours, 30 minutes to play … In the faceoff circle, Regina won 40-29 … Tri-City Americans goalie Xavier Wendt, 17, of Plymouth, Minn., became the 11th goaltender in WHL history to score a goal when he sniped with 60 seconds remaining in a 4-0 victory over the Swift Current Broncos on Wednesday … The Saskatoon Blades traded 19-year-old goalie Ethan McCallum of Brandon to the Penticton Vees on Thursday for a fifth-round selection in 2026 that originally belonged to the Vancouver Giants and a conditional fifth-rounder in 2027. Saskatoon then called up 2008-born netminder Ryley Budd … The Wheat Kings meet the visiting Moose Jaw Warriors this evening at 6 o’clock at Assiniboine Credit Union Place.

» pbergson@brandonsun.com