Kings win spirited contest in overtime

By Brady Grove, Times Reporter

The Wheatland Kings won a thrilling 6-5 overtime game against the Mountainview Colts at home on Nov. 24.
The hard-hitting game saw heroes on both sides of the ice. But it was the Kings who prevailed with a power play marker in the extra frame from Kings forward Isaac Benoit, who scored his team-leading 15th goal of the season.
“It was a good game, I thought our team played well,” said Benoit. “We had good chemistry today and did what we had to get the W.”
The Kings got off to a good start with two goals in less than two minutes starting at the eight minute mark of the first period. Kings forward Kyle Bracko skated through the circle and made a nice move to get past the Colts defenseman and made a quick deke to backhand it top corner. Kings forward Zachary Meadows then hunted down a loose puck in enemy territory to find Parker Keer for his first goal as a King.
But the Colts weren’t going to go down easily and made the most of their opportunities. Two breakaways in the final three minutes of the first led to a tie game. The Kings responded quickly in the second period with goals from two of their big guns in Garret Vander Ploeg and Lucas Muenchrath to make it 4-2 Kings.
The Colts didn’t wait long to counter the Kings and fired one past Kings goalie Brett Willan 20 seconds later. They added a power play goal with five minutes remaining in the second and it looked like the game would remain tied heading into the third, but the Kings weren’t satisfied with that. Muenchrath found Benoit in close for a one-timer that retook the Kings lead.
In the third period, the Kings played a more defensive focused style and tried to limit the Colts chances in what became a battle of attrition. However, it took only one mistake to turn the tide on a Kings powerplay. Colts forward Zane Leatherdale stripped a Kings defender of the puck while forechecking hard and proceeded to loop around the net and into the slot to sneak a shot past Willan to tie the game up with less than six minutes to go.
The Colts had a golden chance a few plays later when a costly giveaway saw the Colts wire a shot from the slot, but Willan made a huge pad save to keep the game tied and send it to overtime.
“Brett’s been nothing but a great success for us,” said Kings head coach Joel Robinson. “The score doesn’t reflect how well Brett’s played.”
The Kings had a power play heading into the extra period and they made the most of it. Benoit made an unorthodox hard backhand slap through his legs on a scramble in front that snuck past Colts goalie Ethan Woodward.
“We had an up and down game, we battled back being down quite a few times but didn’t quite get the bounces we were looking for,” said Colts head coach Rob Turville. “I thought both goalies played unbelievable. There was a lot of scoring chances at both ends and in a 6-5 game you might think the goalies had tough ones.”
The game had a nasty edge as was evident when a heavy crosscheck chipped Benoit’s tooth on the game-winning goal. The physicality ramped as the game progressed and remained close but saw a lot more slashes, hooks and board-rattling body checks.
The Kings played the Ponoka Stampeders the next night in Ponoka and lost 2-1 despite outshooting their opponent 45-22. After the weekend the Kings remain in third place with a 11-8-1 record.
Up next for the Kings will be a grueling three-game weekend starting on the road against the Airdrie Techmation Thunder on Nov. 30 before two home games and a chance at redemption versus the Stampeders on Dec. 1 and the dreaded Coaldale Copperheads on Dec. 2.