Rebels 5 Wheat Kings 4
In a flash, Ben King stole the show.
The 17-year-old forward toe dragged past Brandon Wheat Kings forward Cole Reinhardt, who was defending on the play and flipped a wrist shot past Jiri Patera.
A highlight reel tally to be sure, but a big goal for the Rebels squad that gave up the tying goal 23 seconds earlier and had surrendered a pair of third-period leads.
King’s goal with 3:01 left in the third, gave the Rebels a 5-4 advantage over the Wheat Kings at the Centrium Wednesday. His 10th of the year turned out to be the game-winner, despite some late pressure from the Wheat Kings.
“Bains had a good touch back and I realized there was a forward there, so I thought I’d try something. It worked out and it was huge,” King said of his 10th goal of the year.
The goal helped the Rebels snap a funk that resulted in a pair of stinkers against the Calgary Hitmen last weekend. King said it was a completely renewed effort from the group in the win Wednesday.
“I think we just competed and played our game. We have to be a hard-working, get in the trenches team. On the weekend, we kind lacked that, tonight we were doing that full throttle, so it worked out for us,” he added.
The Rebels had a 3-2 lead after 40 minutes, but through the first five minutes had a number of turnovers, giveaways, and odd-man rushes. After the Luka Burzan tied the game at three with a short side snipe on Ethan Anders, 4:41 into the period, Sutter called a timeout that turned the tide for his group.
“That’s not how we play. Just get back to playing like we’re supposed to and get back to our structure. Get back to forechecking get back to pucks in their zone and let us work in their zone. Be smarter with the turnovers,” Sutter said of his timeout advice.
Red Deer heeded the advice of the bench boss and with 8:24 left in the game, Arshdeep Bains made a spin-o-rama feed to Christoffer Sedoff who opened up a 4-3 lead for Red Deer.
Reinhardt tied the game for Brandon at four with 3:24 to play in the third.
Bains also assisted on the King game-winner and finished with a goal and two assists. For his efforts, Bains was first star. King, his usual linemate said the two have slowly developed chemistry and it’s paying off lately.
“We’ve been together for awhile now. We’re starting to get chemistry. He’s so skilled and easy to play with. Give him the puck, he’ll bury or give it back. We’re starting to click and I think that’s important for us,” King said.
Early in the first, Chris Douglas opened the scoring off the rush, beating a hardly warmed up Jiri Patera for his 10th goal of the season. After an early injury to starter Ethan Kruger 2:33 into the game.
The Wheat Kings got back in the game when Jaxsen Wiebe took an instigator penalty when he decided to fight Marcus Sekundiak after a clean hit on a Rebels defender. On the ensuing advantage, Ridley Grieg tied the game for the Wheat Kings midway through the period on the power play.
Red Deer got the lead back with 4:55 left in the first when Dallon Melin redirected a pass past Patera for his sixth of the season.
Arshdeep Bains put the Rebels ahead with his third shorthanded goal of the year early in the second. Zak Smith took a five-minute major for boarding, but the Wheat Kings failed to capitalize on the advantage, which included one minute of 5-on-3 time to start.
Late in the second, off a faceoff in the Rebels zone, Ben McCarty took a pass from below the goal line and slid his 19th tally of the year past Anders.
Anders finished the night with 32 saves and earned the praise of his coach along with the top defence pair of Ethan Sakowich and Sedoff.
“I thought Sak and Seds had a great game, I thought Andy played well, too,” Sutter said.
“We had a lot of guys play well. There’s things that we gotta continue to work on and get better. We just gotta continue to srtive for excellence and strive to get better every day. That’s been what we’ve talked about since the start of the year. Now you gotta win games.”
The Rebels host the Winnipeg Ice on Friday at 7 p.m. at the Centrium.
Email sports tips to Byron Hackett
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