The 100 Mile House Wranglers battled hard on home ice this weekend coming away with one victory and one defeat.
The Wranglers faced the Kamloops Storm on Friday, Jan. 5 at the South Cariboo Rec Centre losing 4-1. However, they followed up this loss with a spectacular overtime victory against the Kimberly Dynamiters on Saturday who they beat 4-3. Head coach Dale Hladun said that since his players have come back from the Christmas break they’ve been focused and working hard.
“I do think everything is clicking in for the kids now and they’ll find their way,” Hladun explained. “You have to have a system in place and for a long time there were a lot of breakdowns in our gameplay. I think overall now you can hear it in the kids talking to each other. They’re actually relaying the messages I was relaying earlier. The less the coach has to say and the more the players are talking, the more success your team is going to have.”
Friday night’s game started promisingly with the Wranglers holding the Storm in check throughout the first period, with no goals scored by either team. During the second period, however, the Storm started to gain ground scoring one goal early on in the period and then scoring a shorthanded goal seconds into a Wranglers powerplay.
The Storm carried on their scoring streak at the start of the third period, taking advantage of a powerplay to score a third goal. However, Wranglers forward Ethan Davey answered their goal seconds later with one of his own, electrifying the crowd.
Unfortunately for the Wranglers, this goal did not translate into a second wind for the team. The Storm’s defence dug in hard and much of the third period was spent battling over the puck. As the game winded down Hladun chose to pull goalie Owen Pettipas to gain an advantage only for the Storm to score an empty net goal.
“We lost to Kamloops but I thought we did a lot of effective things. They got a shorthanded goal and an empty net goal and we missed chances on breakaways and powerplays. I thought the game was certainly tighter than 4-1 and I was really happy with their effort,” Hladun said
Against the Dynamiters, the Wranglers had a poor first period with Kimberly managing to score all three of its goals, despite the Wranglers keeping pace with them on shots on net. Throughout the second period, the Wranglers’ defence proved strong shutting down Kimberly at every opportunity they got.
As the third period got underway it seemed like the Wranglers would be chalking up another loss. However, once Carter Boomer scored a goal with 12 minutes to go the team visibly rallied.
The Wranglers relentlessly attacked the Dynamiters’ net with first Kegan Landry and later Kayden Stark both managing to slip the puck past Kimberly’s goalie, tying the game with two minutes to go. Hladun said Kimberly is a powerhouse and he was proud his team was able to claw their way back from a three-goal deficit.
“They just wanted to win. They had a will and charge to do it,” Hladun remarked.
As the game went into overtime cheers from the crowd intensified and erupted into thunderous applause as Wranglers’ captain Ty Smoluk scored the decisive game-winning goal within 30 seconds. Hladun said Smoluk played especially well throughout the game and was well-supported by players like Kelton Shinde and Ethan Davey.
“The boys needed that win and our fans needed to see that,” Hladun said, noting his team is still in the running for the playoffs. “Now we’re up three points above the Chase Heat and hopefully we’ll be able to start putting some distance between us and Chase.”
This weekend the Wranglers are going into what Hladun describes as a “tough three-game swing” of away games. They’ll be playing the Sicamous Eagles on Friday night, the Revelstoke Grizzlies on Saturday night and the Heat on Sunday night.
