The Swift Current Broncos put up another goose egg in the goals-against column on Friday night as they defeated the Regina Pats 3-0 on the road.
The victory was the Broncos second consecutive shutout after a 6-0 win on Wednesday over Lethbridge. While the offence didn’t come quite as easy in this one, Broncos Assistant Coach Regan Darby said it was the man between the pipes, Reid Dyck who was the main reason for another shutout to his credit.
“He had a pretty good game, he was pretty focused,” Darby said. “Pretty solid in there, but we managed to be decent in front, boxing guys out not giving them second and third chances and rebounds.”
Dyck made 26 saves for his second shutout in three nights, and fourth of his career. It’s the first time since October 10 and 11, 2014 that a Broncos netminder has won back-to-back games by way of the shutout. Landon Bow made 51 saves over two games for his two clean sheets.
In this game though, the first goal didn’t come until Zach Turner’s seeing eye shot from the blue line beat Ewan Huet to open the scoring basically halfway through the second period.
Things stayed that way until the third at the 6:48 mark when Clarke Caswell’s 14th of the year, and Ty Coupland’s eighth of the year just 29 seconds later made it 3-0. The Broncos locked things down afterwards, only allowing eight shots in the third period.
Darby added that while the puck wasn’t going in like they would’ve liked in the first period, the team stuck with the game plan.
“We really kind of stuck to it,” he said. “In the third period, I felt like things kind of opened up. We just started throwing pucks on net and they just kind of found their way through.”
The Bronco powerplay was 0-for-7 on the night, and the penalty kill was a perfect 4-for-4 as the Broncos improve to 24-18-3-2.
They’ll be back in action on Saturday, hosting the Brandon Wheat Kings for a 7:00pm face-off at Innovationplex. You can hear the game on Country 94.1 FM with Redhead Equipment Case IH Broncos Hockey starting at 6:45.