Kings bested by Bisons

By Tyler Lowey, Times Reporter

Eight games into the Heritage Junior Hockey League season, the Strathmore Wheatland Kings have hit their first snag in the schedule.
It wasn’t the easiest of bounce-back games following a less desirable outcome two weeks ago at home. But the schedule is what it is as the Kings dropped their third straight and first meeting of the season to the Okotoks Bisons 7-5 Oct. 20 at Murray Arena.
The Bisons historically carry the upper hand between the two South Division rivals. Over the past two seasons, the Bisons are 6-1 and have outscored the Kings 45-20.
For the first time this season, the Kings (3-4-1) outshot the opponent. They also grabbed the lead in the first when veteran forward George Montour netted his first of three on the evening from Chayse Hnatowich and Garret Vander Ploeg.
After that, a pair of Matt Thomson penalties allowed the Bisons (7-2-0) to take the lead, converting on both special team opportunities, led by the HJHL’s seventh leading scorer Kyle Harrison.
“I wouldn’t say we’re in an early season funk; we have lost a couple games in a row and since the standings are so tight, we find ourselves at the bottom,” said Kings Assistant Coach Braden Desmet. “I was relatively happy with our performance. We played a fairly good game. We just got into a bit of penalty trouble and they capitalized when we collapsed.”
Down 5-1 in the second, alternate captain Brenden Moore netted his third of the season from Nolan Lightning. With nine points through eight games, Moore appears to be on pace to shatter his career high of 19 points.
Looking for a spark in the third, Thomson dropped the gloves with Dallas Otto in a spirited bout. Thomson has never needed much convincing to dance and was either frustrated or looking for a way to make up for his early penalty trouble.
“Tommy’s fight got everyone going after that,” said Kings captain Keenan Ogle. “We got a quick one to go in from Jaks (Fairs) and built a little momentum from that.”
Leading the comeback in the third was Montour, who turns 21 this December, as he capped off the hat trick with a pair of consecutive goals to close out the third period.
Similar to Moore, Montour should obliterate his previous point total this season. He has already doubled his goal total from last season with eight, and is five points shy of eclipsing his point total as well.
“That was our hope, coming into this season. We saw that (Montour) stepped up at moments last year after it took him a while to find his identity and get his hands going,” said Desmet. “We see now that he can be a dominant player. He is slippery out there, a leader in the room and he skates really well. He has all the tools, it has always been a matter of applying them at once; this year he is doing that.”
After starting the year winning three of his first four decisions, starting netminder Indiana Kelly has dropped two starts and allowed 12 goals over that time frame.
The opponent must be taken into account when evaluating Kelly’s performance, as he has been pinned up against two of the three best scoring teams within the division.
“Indiana has gone up against some of the tougher teams lately and sometimes he gets into a mode where it looks like he’s fighting the puck,” said Desmet. “Nothing against him, sometimes it’s just not your night. When he’s on, he’s on. This is just a chain of events that have gone against him so far. We need to do a better job as a team of playing in front of him.”
Cole Bright entered the game for Kelly two minutes into the third and stopped all 13 shots off the bench. Appearing in four games this season, Bright is 1-1 with a 3.12 goals against average and .930 save percentage.
Looking to right the ship, the Kings took on the winless Three Hills Thrashers Oct. 25 at the Three Hills Centennial Arena. The Kings also squeezed in another road game this week when they took on the Lightning (2-6-1) Oct. 27. The Kings will return home at the end of a busy week to host the Ponoka Stampeders (1-7-1) Oct. 28 (8 p.m.) at the Strathmore Family Centre.