Nychuk leads Wheat Kings again

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This article was published 17/10/2021 (1477 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Chad Nychuk scored in overtime for the second game in a row as the Brandon Wheat Kings beat the Swift Current Broncos 4-3 in Western Hockey League action at Westoba Place on Saturday.

He certainly had an eventful night. Nychuk had to be helped to the bench in the second period after a leg-on-leg collision that he took in the thigh, but returned and was later flagged for a 10-minute misconduct before the period ended. His overtime winner was his fifth goal of the season, which leads all WHL defencemen.

“I think I’m more confident now,” Nychuk said after the game of his success. “It’s up to me to make the young guys feel welcome and keep doing what I’m doing. I have to keep rolling.”

Brandon (4-3-0-0) received its other goals from Rylen Roersma, Nolan Ritchie and Ridly Greig, with Chase Lacombe, Josh Davies and Raphael Pelletier replying for Swift Current (2-4-1-0) in front of a season-high crowd of 4,358.

The game certainly didn’t start the way Brandon hoped. The Wheat Kings were outshot 16-8 in the first period but led 38-21 the rest of the way.

“I didn’t like our start, I didn’t like the way we competed,” Brandon head coach Don MacGillivray said. “I didn’t like a lot of things about the first period but we came to play at the start of the second and took over the game a little bit.”

Swift Current took the lead 11 minutes into the game after a quick start that saw the visitors establish a strong edge in chances. Lacombe’s shot from the point wasn’t spotted by Brandon goalie Carson Bjarnason until the last second and it went in over his glove before he could react.

The Broncos nearly extended the lead seconds later but a shot from the slot after a rebound hit a stick and deflected over the net and glass.

It was a different story to start the middle frame.

Brandon equalized 36 seconds into the second period, just five seconds after it went on its first man advantage. Greig created a turnover behind the Broncos net, passed out to front to Nate Danielson, who sent it to the slot, where Roermsa fired it past Swift Current starting goalie Isaac Poulter for his third of the season.

“It was kind of a scramble play to start with,” Roersma said. “We turned the puck back over and made a couple of passes, quick strike, and it just came to me and I buried it.”

Just 69 seconds later, Ritchie fired a shot from the slot as newly acquired Eric Pearce screened Poulter to give Brandon a 2-1 lead.

“We had a little bit of O-zone time there, moving the puck around,” Ritchie said. “We got the puck down low behind their D, it was kind of a loose puck and Zimms (Tyson Zimmer) got it on the wall and fed it over to me in the slot. I found a hole through the goalie.”

The Broncos tied the game six minutes later on the power play when Davies blistered a shot from the slot, and Swift Current regained the lead directly off a face-off win when the puck came back to the point. Former Wheat Kings defenceman Rylan Thiessen of Brandon put a shot on net and Pelletier scooped in the rebound to put the visitors up 3-2.

Brandon tied the game 11 minutes three seconds into the final frame on a pair of sensational plays. The first came when second-year defenceman Logen Hammett knocked the puck out of the air to keep it in the Swift Current zone. He fed Greig, who looped around the zone and showed great patience as he skated across the front of the net, waiting until Poulter went down and firing the puck in to tie the game 3-3.

Brandon, which failed to capitalize on three power plays late in the second period and in the the third period, nearly potted the winner when Nate Danielson hit the post on a delayed penalty.

But the Wheat Kings took a minor of their own late in the third period, and had to kill 49 seconds of Broncos power-play time in overtime. After accomplishing that, they nearly won the game again when Roersma put a shot off the crossbar that stayed out.

“It was real close,” Roersma said. “I put all my weight into that one and it just didn’t go the way I wanted.”

As it turned out, Brandon didn’t need it.

The play on the winning goal started with newcomer Eric Pearce, who had a pair of assists in his Brandon debut after being acquired on Thursday from the Prince Albert Raiders. He made a long, crisp pass to Ritchie at the Swift Current blue-line, and the Brandonite took the puck over blue-line backwards and drew two defenders to him below the face-off dot.

“I saw a loose puck there and Pearcey was going after it so I thought I would just leave the zone,” Ritchie said. “Chuck followed up and was screaming for it so I knew he was coming. I just tried to get it over to him as fast as I could.”

Nychuk took the pass on the far side of the slot and fired it by Poulter, who was sensational in making 42 stops.

“Pearcey made a shot up to Ritch,” Nychuk said. “Ritch, I think he heard me screaming — I was screaming pretty loud — but he made a good play. Stew (Ritchie) has eyes in the back of his head so he made it pretty easy.” 

Both teams waited at their benches as video officials checked if Ritchie was onside as he crossed the blue-line, and replays clearly showed his back skate entered slightly after the puck.

“I was a little nervous for sure,” Ritchie said of the replay. “It looked like from the video that it wasn’t offside so I thought it was a goal right away.”

Nychuk agreed.

“That one felt nice,” he said. “It would have sucked if it got called back but whenI saw the replay it was fine. It was just a good win.”

Brandon should have lost a goal during a 5-4 overtime victory over the host Saskatoon Blades on Wednesday when the video judge didn’t receive the correct angles to review. The league later admitted a mistake had been made.

Bjarnason made 34 saves in earning his third win in a row for the Wheat Kings. Brandon went 1-for-5 on the power play, with Swift Current scoring once in three chances.

Swift Current interim head coach Devan Praught, who took over this week when head coach and general manager Dean Brockman resigned, said his team really had its moments.

“I thought we had a great first period,” he said. “We were a little bit unprepared for the pushback in the second — that first five minutes of the second kind of cost us — but I was proud of the resiliency. We came back. We’ve been struggling to find offence and got down and came back and took the lead. It would have been nice to see it through, we had our chances at the end as well, but I think it was a good game. We’ve got some learning we have to do but that’s for tomorrow.”

Brandon returns to action on Friday when they begin a three-in-three weekend swing that will see them face the Edmonton Oil Kings, Red Deer Rebels and Calgary Hitmen. Nychuk said they’ll have to be better to earn the tough victories they need.

“I think we have spurts where we’re a really good team and really hard to play against and then some nights you can really see, we take a period off,” Nychuk said. “We really have to clean that up. That’s not how you do well in the playoffs. That’s up to the older guys too to lead these younger guys and welcome them into the league.”

Regardless, Roersma said a win is a win, especially before they head out on the road.

“I think it’s huge, giving us some confidence for the week,” Roersma said. “We’ll have some good practices this week and then we’ll be ready to go for the three-in three in Alberta playing some good teams. We’ll be ready to go.”

ICINGS: Brandon played without F Jake Chiasson (month to month, upper body), F Riley Ginnell (day to day, upper body), F Marcus Kallionkieli (day to day, lower body), G Ethan Kruger (day to day, lower body), D Mason Ward (day to day, upper body) and Belarusian F Zakhar Polshakov (waiting for visa to come to Canada) … Brandon took the battle of the face-off dot 44-30 … Pearce wore No. 16 … The game took 2:38 to play … Ritchie, Greig and Vincent Iorio led the Wheat Kings with six shots on net each.

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