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Tassy’s OT Winner Gives Back 1st Win

PHOTO: TAMI QUAN PHOTOGRAPHY

Vernon, B.C. — The Salmon Arm Silverbacks defeated the West Kelowna Warriors on Thursday afternoon 4-3 in overtime to pick up their win of the ‘Pod’ season.

Simon Tassy scored the game-winning-goal 1:48 into the extra frame, improving the Backs record to 1-2-1.

GAME SUMMARY

Just like the first meeting between the two, this contest was tight throughout.

Salmon Arm opened the scoring for the fourth consecutive game courtesy Julian Recine and his first career BCHL goal, after he sniped a shot on the first power play opportunity of the game.

West Kelowna’s Riley Sharun would tie the game just 2:23 later, after Brennan Nelson centered a pass to him for his first BCHL tally.

After 20 minutes, things were all square 1-1.

The middle frame started out a little slow for the Backs, but they took the lead for the second time in the game with just over seven minutes remaining. Cam Recchi popped out of the penalty box right as Noah Serdachny was carrying the puck through the neutral zone and when Serdachny was double-teamed, he fed a rink-wide pass to Recchi. Recchi used his speed to fly down the left wing and beat Zach Bennett past the glove side on the partial break, making the score 2-1.

Following Recchi’s goal and into the third period, Salmon Arm begun to further dictate the pace of play and at the 7:40 mark of the third, Serdachny and Tassy combined for a pretty insurance marker.

Serdachny made a solid heads up play in the neutral zone by banking the puck off the far side boards to an area where he knew Tassy could get to, and with his speed, Tassy did, before very quickly returning a perfect backhand pass to Serdachny. The Edmonton native then had a clear path to the net and made no mistake, chipping a shot off the cross-bar and in to push the Backs lead to 3-1.

The Warriors weren’t going to go down without a fight or make it easy on the Backs, with Sharun notching his second of the game just 1:05 later, to cut Salmon Arm’s lead to 3-2.

It took under two minutes of 3-on-3 for the Silverbacks to end the game and that was thanks to the heroics and individual skill of Simon Tassy. After Serdachny gave the puck to Tassy in the neutral zone to regroup, Tassy caught the Warriors off guard by quickly re-entering the zone right as teammate Joaquim Lemay was exiting the offensive end. With his quickness and power, Tassy was able to drive past Joughin, cut to the front of the net and beat goaltender Zach Bennett through the five hole to give the Backs the two points.

For the full boxscore, click here.

THEY SAID IT

“Overall we’ve been really happy with our play through the four games here and I don’t think our record has been indicative of how we’ve played…I thought we showed a really good job today on the second half of a back to back of being able to find a way to win. Obviously we would have liked to have got it done in regulation, but it was a good job by our guys to regroup with the late goal there and still come away with the win.” – Silverbacks assistant coach Carter Cochrane

WHAT’S NEXT

The Silverbacks have Friday off before taking on the Vipers on Saturday at 6 p.m. and then the Warriors on Sunday at 4 p.m.

Fans can stream all games on BCHL TV!