The script between the Wheat Kings and Pats seemed almost identical to the night before on the second game of the weekend. At the last minute, however, the Wheat Kings changed the story.
Matteo Michels, Rhett Ravndahl, Marcus Nguyen, and Dominik Petr scored, and Ethan Eskit made 21 save as the Wheat Kings won. Ewan Huet was excellent in the net for Regina with 40 saves in the loss.
“It felt better, I felt we played a better game,” said head coach and GM Marty Murray. “Was it perfect? No, we still have some strides to make. But it feels a lot better to be coming out on the winning side of it for sure.”
Another back and forth first period saw Regina strike first for the second night in a row. Off a scramble, Cameron Kuzma found a puck, walked out of the corner, and lifted home his first WHL goal on the backhand.
In another instance of deja vu, Petr helped the Wheat Kings tie the score. This time he was the set-up man, feeding the puck out from behind the net to Michels, who snapped in his fifth of the season.
But, in keeping with the theme of repetition of the previous night, it was Connor Bear who again gave the Pats a 2-1 lead. This time, he was parked at the bottom of the left circle and quickly released the puck on a slick feed from behind the net by Braxton Whitehead.
Early in the second, the Wheat Kings again answered back. Following hard work below the goal line, Easton Odut won it back to the line for Ravndahl, who fired home the tying tally through a maze of bodies.
Later in the period, the Wheat Kings took the lead for the first time in the game. Nguyen fired it on goal, creating a rebound for Jaxon Jacobson, but it was actually a Pat that inadvertently knocked it into the net to give Nguyen his 11th.
It took only 42 seconds for the Pats to respond. Whitehead got a feed out front on a two-on-one and made no mistake from in close, squaring the score almost immediately.
After all the offense in the second period, the third was dead quiet. Even the shots on goal decreased. In overtime, the shots picked up again. And as the teams went end-to-end, the Wheat Kings drew a power play.
On that man advantage, Petr fired a one-timer that produced a rebound, and the Wheat Kings won the battle for it. Jacobson fed Petr for a second try, and this time he made no mistake to win the game.
The Wheat Kings snap a three-game losing skid and go 1-0-1 on the weekend. Next up, a visit from the Tri City Americans on Friday, November 22.
