NEWS PHOTO RYAN MCCRACKEN Medicine Hat Tigers defenceman Parker Gavlas battles for a puck with Prince Albert Raiders' Ozzy Wiesblatt (19) during a Western Hockey League game on Wednesday at Canalta Centre.
rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com@MHNMcCracken
The Prince Albert Raiders escaped the wrath of the broom on Wednesday night at the Canalta Centre.
Trailing by a goal with less than 10 seconds left in regulation, Raiders centre Aliaksei Protas scored on the doorstep to force overtime before pulling the rug out in sudden death to steal a 4-3 victory from the Medicine Hat Tigers while escaping the season series sweep.
“This one hurts. It hurts a lot,” said Tigers captain James Hamblin. “I definitely feel like I let the team down. I had three chances to put an empty net home, don’t. They come back, it’s unfortunate.”
Nick McCarry scored his second of the night with just over four minutes left to put Medicine Hat in the driver’s seat, but assistant coach Ryan Smith says the Tigers squandered their chance to lock up the victory in the game’s dying seconds.
“We had a couple shots at the empty net, missed those. We had puck control in their zone with 15 seconds left, there was no need to push for another goal,” said Smith. “We could have just melted a few more seconds away in the corner, but we turned it over and they came up the ice. Good players make good plays, and you can’t let a guy like Protas have a shot from there. He will never miss that shot.”
The Tigers were without three key forwards Wednesday, with Elijah Brown, Cole Sillinger and Lukas Svejkovsky all missing due to injury and sickness. Brown and Sillinger are expected to miss at least another week, though Smith says Svejkovsky will only need a few days to recover from illness.
“He was under the weather all week and couldn’t skate this morning. He’ll be fine, a couple days rest and he’ll be good to go,” said Smith, adding he was impressed by his team’s effort in the face of adversity. “They’re the top team in the East, they’re the defending champs. That’s never going to be an easy game – whether we’re full strength or missing five more guys, it’s never going to be easy against a team like that. They’re coached well, they’re disciplined, they’re heavy and we matched them stride-for-stride, hit-for-hit, shot-for-shot.”
Medicine Hat took an early lead when Baxter Anderson chipped a puck in from the neutral zone and watched it bounce over the shoulder of Raiders goaltender Max Paddock – giving the Tigers a 1-0 lead with their first shot of the game.
Daniil Stepanov pushed back for Prince Albert just over a minute later by jamming a puck through Garin Bjorklund’s padding to draw even after 20 minutes.
“A couple weird bounces,” said Anderson, who filled in for Svejkovsky on the top line with Hamblin and Corson Hopwo. “I think we stuck with it pretty well until the end there and then it got away from us a little bit.”
McCarry re-established the Hat lead two minutes into the middle frame – cutting in on net and deflecting a pass from Parker Gavlas past Paddock. But again the Raiders quickly answered with a greasy goal, this time on a weak shot from Justin Nachbauer.
“The hockey gods played a fair game,” Smith said of the bounces.
Medicine Hat responded by mounting some serious pressure in Prince Albert’s end, but they were unable to get anything else past Paddock despite outshooting the Raiders 21-17 through two periods.
The Tigers and Raiders traded chances early in the third, but Medicine Hat broke through late when McCarry entered the offensive zone and finished off a give-and-go with Cole Clayton to ignite the crowd of 2,892.
“They were making it all happen for me to just put them home,” McCarry said of his set-ups from Gavlas and Clayton. “To get seven out of the eight points against these guys in the season is unbelievable. They’re a great hockey team over there, big and strong, so it’s good.”
Prince Albert put together a late push and Protas broke through with seven seconds to force sudden death. The Washington Capitals draft pick then repeated the feat seconds off the in overtime to secure the victory.
“It’s a pretty good feeling to win this game, finally we got them,” said Protas. “It was a pretty good game. Both teams played really fast, it was actually like playoff hockey – really fast, skilled hockey.”
Paddock stopped 30 shots to collect the victory and push Prince Albert to 28-14-5-4.
Bjorklund took the loss on 19 saves, dropping Medicine Hat to 32-15-2-1.
The Tigers head into Brandon to take on the Wheat Kings on Friday at 6:30 p.m.
