RECAP: Giants Drop 4-2 Decision to Vees

Category: ArticleNovember 21, 2025

Penticton, B.C. – The Vancouver Giants were unable to dig themselves out of an early 3-0 hole against the Penticton Vees on Friday night at South Okanagan Events Centre, eventually dropping a 4-2 decision.

The Giants’ overall record now stands at 9-13-0-1, while the Vees improve to 11-7-3-2.

Andrew Reyelts was a difference maker in the Vees crease, making 29 saves on 31 shots.

Giants captain Ty Halaburda scored again, while Ryan Lin had the other Vancouver goal. Kelton Pyne was tremendous in relief for Vancouver, finishing with 29 saves on 31 shots.

Brady Birnie, Diego Johnson, Jakob Kvasnicka and Louis Wehmann each scored for Penticton.

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GAME SUMMARY

Penticton scored just 31 seconds in off a shot from Birnie from the outside of the right circle.

The Vees got a breakaway less than three minutes later and converted to make it 2-0 when Johnson roofed it on the backhand.

Several minutes after that, Kvasnicka got in behind the Giants defence and also converted on the backhand to make it 3-0 for the home side at the 9:12 mark of the first period.

The Giants did have some chances of their own in the first – firing 11 shots on net – but they trailed 3-0 after 20 minutes.

Neither side found the back of the net in the second, thanks to some strong goaltending from both netminders, especially Pyne, who stopped all 16 shots he saw in the middle frame.

The back breaker for the Giants came early in the third, when Wehmann deflected a point shot past Pyne to make it 4-0 for the Vees.

Despite the 4-0 hole, the Giants continued to push and were rewarded at the 8:28 mark of the third when Lin snapped a one-timer off the post and in from the left circle off a great cross-ice pass from Jakob Oreskovic.

One timerrr 🤩 assists to Oreskovic and Obobaifo! pic.twitter.com/aq7FN8IHyq

— Vancouver Giants (@WHLGiants) November 22, 2025

Roughly five minutes later, Halaburda made the game interesting when he snuck a shot through the wickets of Reyelts from the bottom of the right circle to make it 4-2.

Burd finding the five hole with assists from Schmidty and Obo!! 😮‍💨 pic.twitter.com/4OQrjb3Rea

— Vancouver Giants (@WHLGiants) November 22, 2025

The Giants got a power play late in the game and pulled the goaltender to make it a 6-on-4 for the final two minutes, but couldn’t get the deficit any closer.

STATISTICS

SOG: VAN —11/11/9 = 31 | PEN – 10/16/7 = 33
PP: VAN—1/4 | PEN — 0/2
Face-Offs: VAN — 20 | PEN — 38

3 STARS

1st: PEN – Sean Burick – 2A, 2 SOG, +2
2nd: PEN – Callum Stone – 2A, 5 SOG, +2
3rd: PEN – Andrew Reyelts – 29 Saves on 31 Shots

GOALTENDING BATTLE

Vancouver: LOSS – Kelton Pyne (29 saves / 31 shots) + Burke Hood (pulled; 0 saves / 2 shots)
Penticton: WIN – Andrew Rayelts (29 saves / 31 shots)

THEY SAID IT

“Obviously a tough start. You go down 3-0 in the first five minutes and just uncharacteristic things that happened within those goals. It puts you in a hole. I thought we did make a push and I thought our third period was pretty good. We just can’t get ourselves stuck in that hole…It’s kind of the achilles heel of our group is the consistency. The level of compete and physicality and all the hard things that you have to do. I think that consistency of 60 minutes of everyone doing those things, it’s something that we”re addressing, but we need to get better at it.” – Giants Assistant Coach Gaelan Patterson

CLICK BELOW FOR THE FULL POST-GAME INTERVIEW WITH ASSISTANT COACH GAELAN PATTERSON

UPCOMING

The Giants host Tri-City on Saturday for White Spot Legends Night.

Date	Opponent	Time	Location
Saturday, November 22	Tri-City	Langley Events Centre	7:00 PM
Wednesday, November 26	Wenatchee	Town Toyota Center	6:00 PM
Friday, November 28	Penticton	South Okanagan Events Centre	7:05 PM

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