An historic night, the first ever Fishing Derby game featuring the Wheat City Walleye and Lake Diefenbaker Slough Sharks, could hardly have started better for the Walleye. A lull in the middle cost them the game, however.
Nolan Flamand and Marcus Nguyen scored, but the Walleye fell 5-2. Alex Garrett made 13 saves in the loss.
“We knew they were going to push,” said Walleye head coach and GM Marty Murray. “The penalties in the first period were 5-0 us so you know they’re going to be looking to close the gap on the number of power plays. One of the things we talked about was lazy penalties and we took a hooking and two tripping penalties and let them back into the game.”
A five-on-three power play allowed the Walleye to jump out to an early lead. Luke Shipley and Nguyen worked the puck around the umbrella before feeding it through to Flamand for the tap-in.
Early in the second, the Walleye picked up where they left off. Nguyen tried to feed a pass across to Flamand, but it bounced off a backchecking Slough Shark and in.
From there, however, the second period was all Slough Sharks. They started off on the power play, with Rylan Gould tapping home a backdoor feed to make it 2-1.
Three straight odd-man rushes put Lake Diefenbaker ahead. Fresh off a penalty, Payton Kettles came out of the box and finished off a two-on-one. A step-up in the neutral zone gave the Slough Sharks another two-on-one finished off by Dawson Gerwing, and out a scramble just inside the Walleye line, Brady Birnie carried in, kept the shot for himself, and lifted the backhander home.
The Walleye thought they had gotten a goal late in the third, but the Slough Sharks played to the whistle and burried an empty netter to salt the game away and split the brief two-game series.
Next up for the Walleye is a road trip to Saskatchewan, starting with the Saskatoon Blades on Friday, January 3.
