Despite one of their worst games of the season, the Dauphin Kings managed to extend their lead over the Northern Manitoba Blizzard and Neepawa Titans in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League’s MGEU West Division.
Just six days after spoiling the party on Ukrainian Night with a 4-2 win over the Kings, the Virden Oil Capitals scored three times in a span of 1:21 midway through the first period of Friday’s game in Virden en route to an 8-0 shutout victory.
The Kings had little time to dwell on that loss as they faced the Blizzard on home ice for the first time this season, scoring a 3-1 victory, moving eight points ahead of the Blizzard and Titans.
Neepawa lost to Winkler, 3-2, Saturday, blowing a 2-0 lead.
The Kings came out flying, scoring on the first shift of the game just seconds in when Rylan Gage blasted a slap shot past Blizzard netminder Taye Timmerman.
Havryil Simchuk would get credit for a goal on a goalmouth scramble to give the Kings a 2-0 lead and Gabriel Bugeaud made it 3-0 before the period break.
It would stay that way until Miguel Bouvier put the Blizzard on the board with 4:08 remaining.
Kings head coach and general manager Doug Hedley said the team didn’t play that bad in Friday’s game in Virden.
“It’s that just everything went in. Yash (goalie Bryson Yaschyshyn) had one of the toughest nights. We didn’t help him. At times we didn’t play well defensively, we didn’t help out. We didn’t compete like we did tonight,” he said.
“We were hard on pucks tonight. We were battling. It was a great rebound game.”
Friday’s loss was a costly one for the Kings as they also lost forward Cayden Glover for four to six weeks with a broken wrist, as well as defenceman Aiden Murray for a couple of weeks with a rib injury.
On top of that, the team’s best defenceman Naaman Hofer was hit with a two-game suspension for a cross checking major in Friday’s game. He will be able to return this weekend.
Playing the next day was huge for the Kings, Hedley said, especially after losing those three players.
The line of Joshua Schmidt, Gage and Sheldon Shyiak was fantastic, Hedley said.
“They’re a heavy line. They can play against some good top lines and they were very good tonight,” he said.
Getting off to such a good start was also key as was the team’s defensive play.
“When you’re not chasing the game, you can play totally different. I thought our D-zone tonight, the defencemen kept it simple. We did a lot of reverses, going D to D and up. But we never screwed around. We never tried to beat guys, never tried to go through the middle,” Hedley said.
Read the full story in this week’s edition of The Dauphin Herald.
