After picking up a win in their first ‘home’ game in Assiniboia Friday night, the Richardson Pioneer Weyburn Red Wings were looking to keep the momentum going Saturday against the Kindersley Klippers. The Klippers, though, had other plans. They would come out strong in the first period and held off the Red Wings for a 4-2 victory.
“We didn’t seem to have a whole bunch of energy here tonight,” said Red Wings head coach Cody Mapes after the game. “It kind of took until about nine minutes left until we finally got a little bit going. But, at the end of the day, you’ve got to find a way to have a little more energy and a little more jam early on.”
Former Red Wing Rhett Vedress would be the first to score for the Klippers, beating Dazza Mitchell 9:45 into the game. Then Will Christian scored on the power play with 6:40 to go in the first to make it 2-0 Kindersley.
Neither team would score in the second period, but the Red Wings would lose a key part of the offence. Jerome Maharaj was assessed a five-minute major for cross-checking just 2:26 into the second period and would be out for the rest of the game with the accompanying automatic game misconduct.
In the third period, the Klippers started to pull away with Brock Evans and Zakery Anderson scoring moments apart, with Anderson’s goal being an empty netter with 6:06 remaining.
“We weren’t planning on it, but we got a time out, so we were able to kind of try to organize something,” Mapes explained of the decision to pull Mitchell that early in the game. “I think it kind of sparked our guys a little bit. Yeah, we gave up an empty netter, but it kind of snapped our guys back to reality, like, we’re not quitting here.”
This was evident as Ryder Rommelaere scored his second of the season, and extended his point streak to four games, with a goal with 3:47 left. The goal was assisted by Jaxson Ruthven and Turner McIntyre. Then, in the dying seconds of the game, Ruthven potted his 11th of the season, assisted by Ethan Dekay and Dallen Oxelgren.
The Red Wings will now prepare for a game against the Yorkton Terriers on Tuesday night in Assiniboia as their stretch of games at the Southland Co-op Centre continues. You can catch all the action in the game on Great Plains Ford Red Wing Radio Country 106.7 starting with the pregame show at 7:15 p.m. Tuesday.