It took more than 40 minutes for the Red Deer Bantam AAA Rebels to crack the code that was Thomas MacLean.
When they finally did, the goals came in bunches for the home side against the Lethbridge Golden Hawks at Servus Arena Saturday.
Red Deer picked up a 5-1 win in Alberta Bantam AAA Hockey League play, but it was MacLean who held the fort, turning aside 48 shots in the loss.
“The dam finally broke. Their goalie played incredible. Hats off to him. Our conditioning kinda took over in the third and they didn’t have anything more for us,” Rebels head coach Justin Jarmolicz said.
“We were all over them. Sticks on the ice, go to the net hard and get pucks to the crease and you find a way.”
Despite outshooting Lethbridge 35-8 through two periods, it was a 1-1 game going into the third period.
Quinn Goodman-Sampson busted open the floodgates midway through the third and the home side didn’t look back with three more unanswered goals in the win.
Rhett Miller and Chase Walker notched power play goals four minutes apart before Harrison Lodewyk buried 19 seconds after Walker.
“If you let teams hang around, they think they’ve got a chance to win, they’re going to work harder. When you put your foot on their throat and finish them, then they deflate and there’s a little more room,” Jarmolicz said.
The power play rallies were simply marks of skill shining through according to Jarmolicz.
“We never work on it early. We always work d-zone and penalty killing and hope our skill can execute something on the power and for not working on it, it looked pretty good,” he said.
Sunday, the Rebels picked up a big 7-1 win over the PAC Saints at Servus Arena.
Kieth McInnis led the group with four assists, while Owen Callow chipped in two helpers. Six different goal scorers found the back of the net for Red Deer in the victory. Talon Brigley notched a pair of goals and an assist and Chase Walker also contributed a goal and an assist. Josh Perreault, Coy Pighin, Quinn Sampson-Goodman and Nate Thompson all also added a goal for Red Deer.
Mavry Fluet stopped 17 shots in the win for the home side.
Email sports tips to Byron Hackett
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