Tigers 3 Rebels 2 (OT)
Give Emerson Etem an inch and he’ll take a mile.
Just ask the Red Deer Rebels.
The Medicine Hat Tigers star forward took it upon himself to crush the Rebels in a WHL outing Saturday night at the Centrium, scoring the tying and winning goals in a 3-2 Medicine Hat victory before a recorded crowd of 4,928.
With the Tigers trailing 2-1, Etem rushed down the left side and beat Rebels netminder Deven Dubyk at 16:15 of the third period, then pounced on a turnover at centre ice, broke in alone and potted the winner 2:16 into overtime.
“Did he ever come through for us,” said Tigers head coach Shaun Clouston.
“He played hard all night although Red Deer did a good job in frustrating him most of the game.
“We had our young assistant coach Joey Frazer talk to Emerson and convince him to keep going and to stay positive. He (Etem) doesn’t need a lot of room and they gave him just enough that he was able to get by a couple of times.”
The Rebels got a short-handed marker from Adam Kambeitz just 2:25 into the game after Tigers netminder Tyler Bunz — a habitual Rebels killer — misplayed the puck.
Dylan Bredo got that one back a mere 38 seconds later, beating Dubyk to the top corner following a turnover by Red Deer defenceman Devan Faford.
The Rebels potted another short-handed tally from defenceman Justin Weller — who drilled a high shot past Bunz on a drop pass from Kambeitz — in the second period and the lead stood up until Etem took matters into his own hands.
“It was a frustrating end, an awful end to the hockey game,” said Rebels GM/head coach Jesse Wallin.
“It was a hard-fought game and I think we played well through a lot of the night. Our penalty kill did a great job, we had a lot of guys who really paid the price that way by blocking shots.
“We also did a good job of shutting them down in the third period and we were still fine even after giving up the late (tying) goal.”
The Red Deer penalty kill was indeed solid as the Tigers were zero-for-four on the power play. Unfortunately for the Rebels, they were also zip-for-four with a man advantage, including nearly a full two-minute opportunity to start the overtime frame during which they failed to generate a single scoring chance.
“To not even get a shot on goal during that power play . . . I don’t know what to say,” Wallin grumbled.
“That was an absolutely atrocious power play. You rely on your top guys in that situation and quite frankly our power play seems to be on vacation right now.
“You wonder why it’s not creating anything, but we have guys who refuse to shoot the puck, who want to do spin-o-ramas and are soft on the puck. We don’t battle for it and when we get the puck we just whack it to nobody.
“They (Tigers) had the better opportunities during that four-on-three (in overtime) and the winning goal was off a soft turnover that we talk about every day. It was just a very casual play and we turned it over to the top goal-scorer in the league”
The fact that the Tigers have owned the Rebels over the past two seasons and counting — Bunz is 13-2 in regular-season play and 4-1 in post-season action versus Red Deer — is a mystery even to Clouston.
“We’ve had some games where we’ve been badly outshot by Red Deer but our goaltender had been unbelievable and then some other close games like tonight,” said the Tigers bench boss.
“It’s always a battle when we play Red Deer.”
The Rebels have basically no time to shrug off the loss with today’s 6 p.m. meeting with the Oil Kings in Edmonton.
“We had some guys who dug in and played well for us tonight and we had some guys who let us down,” said Wallin.
“To hand tonight’s game away the way we did is really disappointing.”
gmeachem@www.reddeeradvocate.com