A late burst of offense for the Wheat Kings came too late against the Saskatoon Blades. By the time they got their offensive legs underneath them, the game was too far out of reach.
Luke Mistelbacher, Chase Surkan, and Jaxon Jacobson scored and Jayden Kraus made 35 saves but the Wheat Kings fell 6-3 to the Saskatoon Blades. The game saw three fights in the final three minutes.
“Saskatoon I thought came out really hard,” said Wheat Kings head coach and GM Marty Murray. “They play with pace, they’re in your face, and they don’t give you time and space. We’ve got to play faster.”
Despite Kraus’s best efforts, stopping the first 11 shots he faced, the Blades finally broke through. Jordan Martin took the puck off a turnover and fired a shot through a maze of bodies that found the back of the Wheat Kings’ net.
Playing his first game against his former team, Dominik Petr scored a beauty for the Blades. Chipping the puck to himself out of mid-air, he broke in alone and lifted one over Kraus’s arm to make it 2-0.
The big guns for Saskatoon stretched their lead to 3-0 shortly after. On a 3-on-2, the Blades sent the puck to Hunter Laing on the right wing, and he rifled home his third of the season.
Laing was on the board again early in the second. Taking the puck up the right side, he broke into the clear and drove the net on his backhand before lifting it to the top corner.
It was the power play doing the damage for Saskatoon in the third. Petr leaned into a one-timer from the top of the right circle to make it 5-0 on their first power play of the game.
Before the Blades added another power play marker, the Wheat Kings got on the board. Carter Klippenstein spun a backhand pass out front that settled down for Mistelbacher, who sniped his first as a Wheat King on home ice.
But the Blades’ power play did indeed answer. Rowan Calvert threw the puck out front as he broke in, and David Lewandowski got just enough of it to lift it over Kraus and in.
Then the Wheat Kings’ power play got their turn. On a five-on-three, Surkan tried to find Jordan Gavin at the back door but instead bounced a puck off a Blades stick and in. Then, Gavin fed the puck across the ice to Jacobson who rifled home his second of the season.
The goals came too late to do much more than pretty up the scoreboard however. The Wheat Kings will get five days off before hosting the Vancouver Giants at 7:00 on Friday night.
