Flyers 6 Generals 3
The Fort St. John Flyers gave the overflow crowd at the Arena Saturday an indication as to why they’re the defending Allan Cup champions.
The Flyers scored on practically every good chance they had, notching five unanswered goals after falling behind 3-1 in the second period, to record a 6-3 victory over the Bentley Generals and grab a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five McKenzie Cup senior AAA hockey playoff series.
“We didn’t start out well again, but it was the smallest lead (2-1) we’ve given them in the three games,” said Flyers head coach Darrell Leahy. “We didn’t have a couple of our lines going in the first period, but they got going in the second and in the third we had all four lines going and we didn’t do anything wrong.”
That wasn’t the case with the Generals.
“We made blatant errors on the goals against and that obviously can’t happen,” said Generals head coach Brian Sutter. “That happened last night (in a 4-3 overtime loss) as well. They scored three goals on 12 shots last night and had four on 20 shots tonight. They basically scored on their chances.
“We scored three goals and that should be enough to win in the playoffs, in fact that’s enough to win in the regular season. That just tells you we need to tighten up our defence. It starts with the goaltending and out to the defence and to the forwards. It’s a team thing.
“We can score, but we can’t give up more than three goals.”
The Generals appeared to have then game under control after Curtis Austring made it 3-1 just 26 seconds into the middle stanza. But a major mistake on a line change while killing a penalty resulted in a four-on-none breakaway which changed the momentum completely as Tyrell Mason beat Scott Galenza at 9:23.
“It was a good change by our forwards, but we made a costly mistake,” said Sutter. “It’s something we talk about every day. It’s something you learn in mighty mite. Some guys don’t learn.”
Jeff Shipton tied the game at 13:08 after the Generals got caught in the zone and failed to clear the puck and Todd Alexander took advantage of a sloppy play that saw the puck bounce to him in the slot at 15:24 and the Flyers were ahead for good.
The Flyers took advantage of the Generals defence pinching in the third period and broke away on several two-on-ones, capitalizing on two of them.
Defenceman Donny Lloyd made it 5-3 at 4:34 after the Flyers missed on a redirect on the two-on-one, but Mike Stutzel dug the puck out from behind the net and centered to an uncovered Lloyd.
Stutzel finished the scoring at 11:43, beating Galenza when he kept the puck on the odd-man rush.
“It seemed like their forwards weren’t getting back like they did earlier in the game,” said Leahy. “We were able to get the odd-man rushes as we did a better job of moving the puck out of our end.”
Sutter agreed.
“We got caught as we had to go for it, and they scored on two nothing plays, but we have to work our way through it. That’s why they play a series.”
Sutter isn’t about to hand the series to the Flyers.
“We play every game and I’m already looking forward to tomorrow,” he said.
“It’s definitely not over,” added Leahy. “As I said before someone has to win three games.”
Sean Robertson and Scott Doucet sandwiched goals around a power play marker by Kip Noble as the Generals took a 2-1 lead in an entertaining opening period.
• The Flyers finished with 28 shots on Galenza while the Generals had 25 shots on Clayton Pool, who was once again solid . . . Flyers took seven of 11 minor penalties . . . The fourth game is tonight with the fifth, if necessary Monday, both at 7 p.m. . . . Generals lost possibly their top forward in Braden Appleby with seven minutes left in the second period when he went down and was cut on the wrist by a skate and taken to the hospital.
drode@www.reddeeradvocate.com