Friday night’s Red Deer Rebels game was a showdown against one of the Western Hockey Leagues’ best teams, the Seattle Thunderbirds.
Both sit on top of their respective divisions. Red Deer has a comfortable lead as the leader of the Central Division meanwhile the Thunderbirds are in first in the U.S. Division.
Only one could come out victorious and Seattle did so in dominating fashion beating Red Deer 6-1 Friday night.
The first two periods in Seattle were held scoreless and the Thunderbirds controlled the pace of play outshooting Red Deer 24-14 heading into the final period.
Seattle scored over six minutes into the third when forward Jared Davidson buried an opportunity off the pass from Kevin Korchinski.
Just over a minute after that Kai Uchacz tied the game 1-1 for Red Deer on the powerplay for his 40th tally of the campaign. Forward Ben King continued his impressive stretch of games assisting on Uchacz’s goal.
However, the game started to unravel for Red Deer when Seattle reclaimed the lead at the 13:22 minute mark when Davidson notched his second of the game. The Thunderbirds added the insurance goal two minutes after off the stick from Nico Myatovic.
Seattle added another shortly after while on the penalty kill to take a commanding 5-1 lead. Dylan Guenther, who was acquired by Seattle on the trade deadline and soon after sent down by the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes, scored his first as a Thunderbird.
With a minute and a half left, Myatovic scored his second of the game to put Seattle up 6-1.
Despite the frustrating evening, Rebels goaltender Kyle Kelsey had 36 saves in the contest and on the other end of the ice Thomas Milic made 24 saves.
The Rebels are now 2-2 on their road trip through the United States. Before this stretch of games, it had been four years since the Rebels played in the U.S. The tour will conclude on Saturday in Tri-City when Red Deer takes on the Americans at 7:05 p.m. mountain time.
