After building up a two-goal lead on the Regina Pats, the Wheat Kings saw it slip away in the opening minutes of the third. From there, however, they took a multi-goal lead they would never surrender.
Joby Baumuller hit the 40-goal mark with two goals, and Brett Wilson, Nigel Boehm, Prabh Bhathal, and Dylan Ronald all scored as the Wheat Kings beat the Regina Pats 6-3. Jayden Kraus turned aside 24 shots in his return to the lineup.
“It was a pretty solid road effort for the most part, other than a two or three minute window in the third period,” said Wheat Kings head coach and GM Marty Murray. “I thought we played pretty hard and, like I said, put out a good road effort.”
Early in the first, the Pats opened the scoring with a burst of speed off the rush. Zach Lansard was stopped on his net drive, but Maddox Schultz followed up and tapped it in for the first goal of the game.
It took just 24 seconds for the Wheat Kings to respond. Brady Turko broke over the blue line up the left wing, and his shot produced a rebound that leaked behind the net for Wilson. Wilson wrapped the puck back out front, bounced it off Marek Schlenker and in.
In the last two minutes of the second period, moments after a successful penalty kill, the Wheat Kings took their first lead of the game. Baumuller spotted Boehm stepping out of the box and sent him in on a 2-on-1. Boehm kept the shot for himself and rifled one past Schlenker for his second of the season.
Yet again the Wheat Kings struck quickly after a goal. Just 41 seconds later, Luke Mistelbacher spun a pass out front to a waiting Bhathal, and the rookie forward snapped a shot through a screening Pats defenseman and Schlenker for the 3-1 lead.
Just as the Wheat Kings had done, however, the Pats scored back-to-back goals quickly in the third. First, Schultz found the rebound of a shot and fired it on goal from the right wing, just managing to sneak it past Kraus’s glove. Then, just over a minute later, Ephram McNutt found himself alone in the slot and made no mistake to tie the game.
The next goal, however, went the Wheat Kings’ way, and gave them a lead they never lost. Nicholas Johnson won the draw back to Cam Allard, and he put a pass right in Ronald’s wheelhouse for the one-timer that beat Schlenker to the blocker side.
Fighting for their playoff lives, the Pats pulled Schlenker twice. Baumuller burned them both times. He picked up his 39th and 40th of the season, the latter set up by an unselfish pass from Johnson, and salted the game away for the Wheat Kings.
The win secures the fifth spot in the Eastern Conference for the Wheat Kings, and gives them 39 wins on the season. The rematch with Regina goes tomorrow in Brandon at 6:00 Central Time.
