In Control Blades Able to Finally Swat Aside Pesky Rebels

The Saskatoon Blades never trailed, but they found the Red Deer Rebels to be like the pesky mosquito that just kept hanging around and wouldn’t go away, before the Bridge City Bunch ended up with a 6-5 trumph Saturday in Central Alberta.

The result was the third straight win for the Blue and Gold, all on the road this week. It was, also, the fifth straight head-to-head victory for the Blades over Red Deer. Saskatoon is now 13-8-2 for the season and the legitimate winning run leaves the struggles on the U-S Division road trip in the rearview mirror. The Bridge City Bunch held leads of 1-0, 2-1 and 4-2 – only to have the Rebels rebound to tie the score. The home side appeared to have tied the game at 6-6 with 1:35 left in the third period, but a video review upheld the no goal call on the ice by one of the referees, even though the red goal light came on behind the Blue and Gold net. What turned out to be the winning goal for the Blades also went to a video review, which upheld the good goal call on the ice as the rebound of Kazden Mathies’ shot bounced off Zach Olsen’s (pictured) chest and in. Cooper Williams scored twice and added an assist for Saskatoon. Rowan Calvert, Dominik Petr and Hunter Laing also tallied for the Bridge City Bunch, who connected for three power play goals on four chances and out-shot the 7-11-3 Rebels 33-23. Olsen added an assist for a multi-point game. In all, 11 members of the Blue and Gold recorded a point. For Red Deer, signed Dallas Stars’ forward Jaxon Fuder notched a hat-trick and added an assist while Samuel Drancak extended his goal streak to seven games and chipped in a helper as well. The Blades are off until a Friday home game against Swift Current. Between now and the Christmas break, Saskatoon will play seven of 11 games at SaskTel Centre. The Bridge City Bunch have played 15 of 23 games so far on the road – the most of any team in the W-H-L. Following are the audio highlights from CJWW’s broadcast, Les Lazaruk’s Post-Game Show interviews with head coach Dan Da Silva and Olsen plus the official game summary courtesy the W-H-L website…..

SASKATOON Goals SASKATOON PLAYERS (plus) RED DEER PLAYERS (minus) Per. Time  G-As1-As2 1st 5:47  16 3 4 11 16 27 2 4 20 21 26 1st 12:41 PP  16-47-11 2nd 6:14 PP  23-9-20 3rd 4:43  82-8 8 17 20 47 82 2 4 11 14 22 3rd 12:52 PP  27-16-4 3rd 15:26  77 9 23 47 56 77 7 8 11 14 22

RED DEER Goals RED DEER PLAYERS (plus) SASKATOON PLAYERS (minus) Per. Time  G-As1-As2 1st 10:44  14-11-10 7 8 11 14 22 16 19 41 56 71 1st 17:29 PP  11-14-22 3rd 6:43  21 3 17 19 21 26 3 4 17 20 82 3rd 9:56 PP  11 3rd 16:00  11-17-4 4 11 14 17 22 9 23 47 56 77