What might be the strangest game of the WHL season so far, and certainly the strangest of the Wheat Kings’ season, went against them on Friday, November 7.
Luke Mistelbacher and Dylan Ronald scored twice each, but it wasn’t enough as the Wheat Kings fell 8-7 to the Lethbridge Hurricanes. Brady Turko, Caleb Hadland, and Nicholas Johnson also scored in the loss.
“It was one of the weirdest games I’ve seen from the time I’ve been involved in hockey from a number of standpoints,” said Wheat Kings head coach and GM Marty Murray. “Obviously we give eight goals, that isn’t anywhere near to standard. A lot goes into that.”
The first period between the Wheat Kings and Hurricanes almost defied description. It started out hot for the Wheat Kings, just 1:41 in, when Mistelbacher through puck from the right circle to the back door for a pinching Ronald, who tapped it in.
Just 22 seconds later, the Wheat Kings went up by two. Jimmy Egan won a battle behind the net and fed it out to Johnson. Rather than fire a shot, however, he patiently fed the puck out front to Turko, who cut to his backhand and lifted it home.
The Hurricanes squared the score quickly. First, Shane Smith let a shot go from the top of the umbrella on the power play that found its way through traffic and just inside the post. Then, Luke Cozens was left alone in the slot for just long enough to let a one-timer go to tie the game.
On a delayed Wheat Kings’ penalty, Logan Wormald gave the Hurricanes their first lead of the game when he fed a puck back door and saw it go off a Wheat King and in. Then, an incredible run of power plays handed to the Hurricanes saw them awarded back-to-back overlapping 5-on-3s. Owen Berge scored on both, making it 5-2.
Before the period was over, however, the Wheat Kings had fought back and tied the game. It started, once again, with Ronald, who took a saucer pass from Jordan Gavin and wristed home his third of the season. Gavin earned his 200th WHL point on the goal.
With four-on-four play in effect, the Wheat Kings cut the deficit to one. Jaxon Jacobson waited just long enough for Mistelbacher to cut in behind the defense, then put the puck right on his tape. Mistelbacher drove the net and opened up the five-hole with a slick move to make it 5-4.
Hadland tied the score with less than a minute to go in the first. Parking himself in front, he found a pass from Grayson Burzynski and tapped it in. Both Hadland and Burzynski were ushered to the penalty box almost immediately after.
The second proved little saner than the first. Lethbridge took the lead on a heavy point shot by Tomas Malinek, but the Wheat Kings answered. Jacobson fed the puck from the left circle to the back door for Mistelbacher, and he cashed in for his second of the game.
Again the Hurricanes took the lead, this time with a shot off the rush from the right circle by Cozens, and again the Wheat Kings tied the game. Mistelbacher carried around the net from the right wing corner to the left and put it on Johnsons’s tape in the slot. He wired a shot to the top corner for the seventh goal of the game for the Wheat Kings.
In the third, the Hurricanes got another lead off the rush. Wormald got the puck at the top of the right circle on a two-on-one and buried what would, oddly enough, prove to be the last goal of the game.
The Wheat Kings reset and travel to Medicine Hat to face the Tigers tomorrow. Puck drop is 8:00 Central Time, 7:00 locally.
