The Wheat Kings didn’t have the lead for long against the Moose Jaw Warriors, but they erased plenty of Moose Jaw leads and held it themselves when it mattered most.
Grayson Burzynski scored twice, and Jaxon Jacobson, Carter Klippenstein, Joby Baumuller and Max Lavoie all scored once each in a 6-4 Wheat Kings win. Filip Ruzicka stopped 30 shots in his 8th victory of the campaign.
“We clamped it down and capitalized on some opportunities,” said Wheat Kings head coach and GM Marty Murray of his team’s third period. “We played a good, solid road period where we weren’t necessarily trading chances with them and got a couple of big kills in the last half of the third period there.”
It didn’t take the Warriors long to open the scoring. At the 1:00 mark of the first period, Lynden Lakovic sent the puck into traffic hoping for a back-door tip-in and instead watched as his 18th of the season went straight in through a maze of bodies.
Another scramble in front led to a 2-0 Warriors’ lead. The Wheat Kings’ tied up every stick in front except one, and that stick belonged to Riley Thorpe, who found the bouncing puck and chopped it home.
In the span of 19 seconds, Klippenstein almost single-handedly ignited the Wheat Kings’ response. First, he sent Jordan Gavin in on a breakaway and while Gavin was stopped, he left a rebound that Klippenstein gladly cleaned up.
Before that shift was even over, Klippenstein had struck again, this time driving wide to his left past a Moose Jaw defenseman and sending the puck back door to a hard charging Baumuller. Baumuller let the puck bounce off him and in to tie the game.
A breakdown resulted in what was effectively a 3-on-0 for the Warriors, and they cashed in. Kash Andresen flipped the puck over to Gage Nagel, and he snapped it past Ruzicka and in.
But again the Wheat Kings had an answer. Jacobson’s shot was blocked, but Burzynski found the rebound and flipped it through traffic and in for another tying goal.
Though they got through most of their second penalty kill of the period, another odd man rush against cost them. The Warriors found the puck on the right wing and sent it back to the slot for a waiting Connor Schmidt, who fired his fifth of the season past Ruzicka.
Good cycle work by the Wheat Kings turned into yet another tying goal. Nigel Boehm held the left point and sent it to the corner for Caleb Hadland, who fed it out to Jacobson for a quick snapshot past Chase Wutzke.
Hadland and Jacobson were back at work on the cycle later in the period, this time with Jacobson feeding Hadland for the shot. While Wutzke stopped the shot, he left a rebound for Burzynski, who jumped up and snapped home what proved to be the game winner.
After a solid penalty kill, the Wheat Kings denied the Warriors a chance to get Wutzke out for the extra man for some time, and when they did the Wheat Kings took advantage. Lavoie boxed out his man in front, picked off the pass intended for him, and fired it into the yawning cage with just 6.1 seconds to go.
The win moves the Wheat Kings to 10-9-1 on the season. Their next game also comes on the road in Saskatchewan, Friday night when they travel to face the Prince Albert Raiders.
