PHOTO: PURE LIFE PHOTOGRAPHY
Salmon Arm, B.C. — The Salmon Arm Silverbacks defeated the Penticton Vees by a 4-2 score on Saturday night at the Shaw Centre, snapping the Vees nine-game win streak in the process.
The Backs are now 2-5-1 in the Okanagan Cup, while the Vees are 9-1.
GAME SUMMARY
The Silverbacks flew out of the gate in this one, striking three times in the game’s first 15 minutes.
Just 43 seconds in, Drew Bennett opened the scoring by tucking home a rebound after Kieran Ruscheinski threw the puck to the net from the point.
Halfway through the period, Braden Fischer forced a turnover in the offensive zone and then set up Logan Shaw in the slot, whose wrist shot was stopped by the shoulder of Yaniv Perets, but Carter Loney was right there to bury the rebound and double the Backs lead.
With just under five minutes to go in the period, Drew Bennett stole the puck from Matteo Costantini just inside his own blue line, who happened to be the last Vee back, and hustled down the other way for a clean breakaway, where he finished on the backhand to increase the Silverback lead to 3-0. Bennett’s second goal of the period ended up chasing netminder Perets, who was replaced by Kaedan Lane to start the second period.
Right before the first period came to a close, the Vees got a goal back, after Luciano Wilson was left all alone in front and made no mistake by going to the backhand for the finish in tight.
The second period saw the Vees start to take over the game, and halfway through, Ryan Upson hustled to a loose puck and lifted a shot over the glove of Riley Kohonick to make the score 3-2.
The Backs were able to stave off the Vees for most of the third and with just over five minutes remaining, they got a much-need and very timely power play marker courtesy of Joaquim Lemay, whose wrist shot from the left point gave him his first career BCHL goal.
The Vees pulled the goalie with 2:17 remaining but couldn’t find the back of the net, and the final score was 4-2.
For the full boxscore, click here.
THEY SAID IT
“The simplicity that we played with [was key]. I don’t think there was anything with [our success] this weekend that leapt off the page, like ‘wow, look at this or that,’. It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t pretty and who really cares when you win. The biggest thing for us is just to learn from game awareness. There’s just little things that show that if we want to compete with teams like this that start 9-0 and we want to do it every weekend, it’s not going to be something that you can just decide to do, it’s got to be something that we are doing every single day. We built throughout the week leading up to this and it’s going to be right back to work on Monday.” Asst. Coach Carter Cochrane
SILVERBACK TOP PERFORMER
Drew Bennett
Bennett scored his fourth and fifth goals in the Okanagan Cup and also provided the screen in the third period on Lemay’s power play insurance marker. All five of his goals have come in the last six games. It wasn’t just the goal scoring, however, as his all around hustle has been impressive as of late.
WHAT’S NEXT
The Silverbacks and Vernon Vipers will play a home-and-home series on Halloween weekend, with the Backs hosting them on Friday, Oct. 30 at 6:30 p.m. and then heading to Vernon the following night for a 6 p.m. puck drop.
Fans can stream all games on HockeyTV, plus there is a free radio stream now available for games as well at mixlr.com/sa-silverbacks.
