Shorthanded Wheat Kings Fall To Powerhouse Blades
An undermanned Brandon Wheat Kings squad battled hard against the Saskatoon Blades, but the talent level of their opponent and the depletion of their own bench finally proved too much for them.
Brady Turko and Jaxon Jacobson scored, but the Blades scored three unanswered goals in the second and third periods to win 5-2.
“We battled hard,” said Wheat Kings head coach and GM Marty Murray. “We came out slowly, got down early, and then I thought we battled pretty hard given the fact we had ten forwards going and two of them were affiliate players. We battled. There are individuals I’d like to see more out of but from a team standpoint it was a decent effort against a really good team.”
The Blades opened the scoring early, a mirror image of the last game between these two teams in Saskatoon. Egor Sidorov drove the net and took a feed from Trevor Wong to score first. Then, on the power play, Sidorov played set-up man to Brandon Lisowsky, who chopped home the one-timer to make it 2-0.
As was the case against the Hitmen, the young guns came through for the Wheat Kings to help them get back into it. Jacobson drove over the line, took a feed from Turko and gave the puck right back to him for the tap in to not only give the Wheat Kings their first of the game, but give Turko his first WHL goal.
At four-on-four, Jacobson turned a seemingly harmless play into the tying goal. Working around the umbrella to the right point, he snapped a shot through traffic and beat Evan Gardner to make it 2-2.
Once four-on-four ended, however, the Blades remained on the power play and they made it count as Fraser Minten snapped home the go-ahead goal. The game began to spiral out of control from there as each team lost players to five-minute majors and injury on those same major penalties.
The third featured far less nastiness, but the Blades were able to take advantage. Alexander Suzdalev drove the net off the rush and flipped home the insurance goal, then added an empty netter on a long-range backhand for good measure.
Following the loss, the Wheat Kings home schedule in February comes to an end. They’ll be on the road starting on Thursday night in Prince Albert at 7:00.
