Tigers 4 Rebels 2
Too many of the Red Deer Rebels’ top players were bottom-feeders on Tuesday at the Centrium and the Medicine Hat Tigers were the recipients.
“I’m disappointed . . . disappointed and frustrated,” said Rebels head coach/vice-president of hockey operations Jesse Wallin, following a 4-2 Western Hockey League loss to the Tigers before a recorded audience of 3,788 at the Centrium.
As Wallin went on to point out in so many words, a large handful of the Rebels’ go-to skaters were colder than the temperature that undoubtedly kept several hundred fans at home. Cold, uninspired and sloppy.
“I think we’ve got a number of players that we’re not getting enough from right now,” he continued.
“They just aren’t contributing anywhere near the level that they need to. It’s disappointing and it’s concerning. We need our top guys to be our top guys and we need them to lead by example. We need them to do things right and some of them right now aren’t pulling their weight.
“That has to change. You can’t have that at this time of year.”
The visitors notched a pair of early power-play goals and then rode the goaltending of Tyler Bunz through the remainder of the opening period while being severely outplayed.
With the Rebels two men short, Thomas Carr poked the puck under Darcy Kuemper 4:25 into the contest. Two minutes later, with the Rebels serving their third penalty, Dylan Busenius directed a point shot that glanced off Rebels defenceman Justin Weller and past Kuemper.
“We were fortunate there. We scored a couple of power-play goals but that’s about all we did in the first period,” said Tigers head coach Shaun Clouston.
“We relied heavily on Tyler Bunz. We really struggled to get pucks out of our zone and I thought Red Deer did a great job of staying on top of us.”
But, in the end, the horrible start cost the Rebels, who twice pulled to within a single goal but couldn’t find a way to avoid losing their fourth game in five starts against Medicine Hat this season.
Wallin, naturally, was less than impressed with his club’s lack of discipline in the early going.
“You go into a big game like that and take four stupid penalties in the span of 10 minutes and put yourself down 2-0,” he said, particularly peeved by his club’s first two penalties — a slashing infraction on Alex Petrovic in the offensive zone and a delay-of-game call on Colin Archer, who fired the puck over the glass in the Rebels end. The penalties were assessed a mere 10 seconds apart.
“That’s just an unacceptable penalty by Petro. It’s a retaliation penalty and it’s not the first time it’s happened,” said Wallin. “You take that penalty and the pucks drops and is hardly touched and we shoot it out of the zone. We’ve done that four times in the last three games. The rule has been there all year. The glass is 20 feet high . . . I don’t understand.
“We were just making some frustrating errors and shooting ourselves in the foot. We’re not getting enough out of some guys and we have to get that turned around.”
The Tigers held a 13-10 edge in shots in the middle frame but coughed up the lone goal when John Persson shovelled Archer’s centering pass under Bunz.
Reid Petryk restored the visitors’ two-goal cushion 2:17 into the third period, moving out of the corner, fighting off a check and firing a shot short side on Kuemper.
Daulton Siwak converted a cross-crease feed from Brett Ferguson nine minutes later to cut the deficit to one, but the Rebels couldn’t beat Bunz down the stretch, setting the stage for Linden Vey’s empty-net marker in the final minute.
“We knew the third period was going to be a battle and our guys did a real good job with their positioning,” said Clouston. We didn’t give up out-numbered rushes. We had good numbers at our line, competed hard in our zone and kept it simple.”
The Tigers also pressured the Rebels defence through the final 40 minutes as well as the points on the Red Deer power play.
“You want to spend as much time in the offensive zone as you can,” said Clouston, whose second-place team pulled to within four points of the Rebels in the Central Division and hold a game in hand.
“Red Deer did a great job against us in the first period and we were a little better as the game went on. If we can get pucks deep and get above and always work to get tape to tape and try and disrupt things coming out of their zone . . . that’s the key to our game. We did a lot better job of that in the last two periods.”
Bunz finished with 40 saves while Kuemper turned aside 28 shots.
gmeachem@www.reddeeradvocate.com