NEWS PHOTO KELLEN TANIGUCHI
A pass just misses Ryan Chyzowski’s stick as he slides past the goal in Friday night’s game against the Red Deer Rebels.
After a slow start, the Medicine Hat Tigers’ red hot power play converted three times to gain momentum and lead the team to a 4-2 win to hand the Red Deer Rebels their 10th straight loss on Friday night.
The Tigers entered the game converting on a league-leading 40.7 per cent of their power play chances this season. The team netted three goals on five chances with the man advantage on Friday at Co-op Place.
The Rebels opened the scoring mid-way through the opening period. Centre Ben King cut through the Tigers’ defence and received a pass in stride from winger Arshdeep Bains creating a breakaway chance where he snapped a wrist shot past Garin Bjorklund’s glove side.
Medicine Hat was in penalty trouble early in the second period and Red Deer had an extended 5-on-3 opportunity. Bjorklund made a couple of big stops and defenceman Daniel Baker used his skates to make two key blocks to kill the penalties off.
However, as the last man was leaving the penalty box, King perfectly placed a shot past Bjorklund for his second goal of the game, increasing the Rebels lead to two.
The Tigers had plenty of power play time in the second half of the second frame and threw a ton of pucks at Rebels’ netminder Ethan Anders who made a number of massive saves.
The Tabbies finally broke through on the power play when Lukas Svejkovsky batted a puck down near the goal line and found Corson Hopwo in front of the net who lifted the puck past Anders.
Medicine Hat was back on the power play early in the third period and Brett Kemp netted his ninth goal of the season to tie things up just over three minutes into the frame. 33 seconds later, Eric Van Impe’s wrister found twine giving the Tigers their first lead of the game – Teague Patton and Oasis Wiesblatt added assists on the play.
The Tigers power play added third tally 13:08 into the third frame when Hopwo got a piece of a Ryan Chyzowski shot from the blueline and directed the puck to the back of the net giving Medicine Hat a 4-2 lead.
With the win, the Tabbies improve to 10-3-0-1 and the Rebels fall to 2-13-2-0 on the season.
The puck drops at 7 p.m. on Saturday at the Westerner Park Centrium in Red Deer for the second game of the three-game series.
