Iginla restored the Rockets lead with his first of three straight at the 11:52 mark of the period, after he split the defence and poked it home to make it 3-2.

Three minutes later Iginla scored shorthanded off the rush to make it 4-2.

The 17-year-old completed the natural hat-trick with an empty-net marker with 1:37 remaining in the game to make it a 5-2 final score.

THEY SAID IT

“Obviously a tough loss. It’s a big game for us. We’ve got to reset and get ready for Sunday. We’ve got to pull out some things we did well and we’ve got to clean up a couple other areas…5-on-5 I thought it was pretty even overall. We give up a couple shorthanded goals and an empty netter, so that’s what it came down to. I thought our discipline was good tonight, I think four seconds on the kill. We did a good job in that regard, but ultimately we lose the game and special teams played a part in it at the end of the day here tonight.” – Giants Associate Coach Adam Maglio on the game as a whole

“You build a lot of momentum from a power play even if you’re not scoring and certainly I think [losing momentum] was a factor. We were kind of panicking with the puck and there wasn’t balance. I thought we weren’t recovering well. Our routes weren’t good. It ends up with a breakaway, they don’t score, they score on the 2-on-1 and then ultimately Iginla scores in the third there shorthanded as well off the rush, so certainly we’ll clean up, we’ll look at it.” Giants Associate Coach Adam Maglio on the poor power play draining momentum

STATISTICS

SOG: VAN — 9/6/11 = 26 | KEL – 15/10/10 = 35
PP: VAN — 1/5 | KEL — 0/1
Face-Offs: VAN — 22 | KEL — 30

3 STARS

1st: KEL – Tij Iginla – 3G, 1A, 6 SOG
2nd: KEL– Andrew Cristall – 1G, 1A, 5 SOG
3rd: VAN – Mazden Leslie – 1A, 4 SOG

GOALTENDING BATTLE

Vancouver: Loss – Matthew Hutchison (30 saves / 34 shots)
Kelowna: WIN – Jake Pilon (24 saves / 26 shots)