Ornery Blades Overwhelm Wheat Kings
The last meeting between the Brandon Wheat Kings and Saskatoon Blades started a rare three-game losing skid for Saskatoon. Right from the drop of the puck it was evident the Blades were determined to not repeat that loss.
Carson Bjarnason was excellent, but far too busy as he stopped 45 of 49 shots he faced in a 4-0 loss. Saskatoon got two power play goals in the third, and their top players lit the lamp on all four tallies.
“I thought that power play at the end of the first, the shots were 9-8 and they got a flury there at the end,” said Wheat Kings head coach and GM Marty Murray. “The second period got away from us, we held on, it was 2-0. We just couldn’t get it going.”
A failed dump-in quickly came back to bite the Wheat Kings as it sent the big guns for the Blades back the other way on a 3-on-1. They worked the puck back and forth before Brandon Lisowsky finished it off for the 1-0 lead.
The big guns went to work for the Blades again in the middle frame, with Egor Sidorov pulling a rabbit out of his hat, dangling through the offensive zone and rifling a backhander to the top corner.
Power plays for the Blades told much of the story in the third period. Lisowksy got his second goal of the night on a man advantage, as he took the rebound of a heavy shot and wasted no time snapping it home.
The game began to get out of hand and, in a strange series of events, Matt Henry was handed seven minutes in penalties. It took the Blades only eight seconds to score on this series of penalties as they fed Fraser Minten at the backside of the net for the tap-in.
The loss is the third in a row for the Wheat Kings who now go on the road for their next five straight games. First up is a stop in Medicine Hat at 8:00 Central Time on Tuesday, March 5.
