For the second game in a row, the Wheat Kings put up seven goals on the road. But this time, they earned a much better result in the standings.
Luke Mistelbacher scored a hat trick, and Brady Turko scored twice as well including the game winner as the Wheat Kings downed the Medicine Hat Tigers 7-4. Grayson Burzynski and Jordan Gavin also scored in the win, while Filip Ruzicka made 36 saves in his sixth victory.
“It was a battle, this is a hard bard to win in and this is their first home loss of the year,” said head coach and GM Marty Murray. “It’s a big one for us, especially since we had a letdown last night. I thought we responded pretty well. There was a point at the end of the second period where we bent but didn’t break, and we reset really well at the start of the third and had a huge third period.”
Despite a successful first penalty kill, the Wheat Kings trailed 1-0 after the first. A pass from the left wing wall squeaked its way through some backcheckers and sent Jonas Woo into the clear. The former first round pick made no mistake with a quick snapshot for the first goal of the contest.
Early in the second, the big guns got the Wheat Kings out to their first lead of the night, and Mistelbacher’s fingerprints were all over it. First, he took a pass from behind the net and wired a puck to the top corner from the bottom of the right circle.
Breaking in up the right wing, Mistelbacher struck again. He opened up just enough of a lane to let his deadly shot go and found the back of the net as his shot was just too much for Medicine Hat’s Carter Casey to handle.
A run of power play goals soon followed, with the Tigers striking first. After Bryce Pickford held the line, he fed the puck to Woo in the high slot, and he sniped his second of the evening.
But the Wheat Kings man advantage answered back. A double-drop pass play ended with Jaxon Jacobson breaking up the left wing and putting a perfect pass back-door for Turko as he drove the net and fired it home.
The third power play goal of the period went Medicine Hat’s way. This time, Pickford took the shot himself, dragging his way from the right wing to the slot and ripping home his ninth of the season.
When the game shifted back to even strength, the Wheat Kings’ young guns took over. Prabh Bhathal worked the puck down the boards to Carson Ralph, and with Gunnar Gleasman setting the screen, Burzynski rifled home the go-ahead goal to give Ralph his first WHL point.
Later in the third, the Wheat Kings built the first two-goal lead of the game. Jimmy Egan sent the puck into the crease looking for Turko, and Turko found the puck as it flipped in the air, batting home what would prove to be the game winner.
The Tigers pulled the goaltender with over five minutes to go, but Mistelbacher made them pay almost immediately. Taking the puck in the middle of his own zone, he picked his spot and put the puck right into the empty net.
The Wheat Kings weren’t done either. Carter Klippenstein took the hit to make the play on the far side of the Tigers’ zone, leaving the puck for Gavin at the left circle. Gavin took the lane right to the net and opened up the five-hole on Casey to make it 7-3.
Though Woo would complete the hat trick with 2:32 to play, using a bomb of a slap shot from the right circle, the Wheat Kings had secured the win. They head home to meet the Red Deer Rebels on Remembrance Day.
