GOING SEVEN
Hurricanes force Game 7 with the Rebels with a 4-1 win Sunday in Red Deer
The Lethbridge Hurricanes live to play another day. Second period goals from Ryan Vandervlis and Alec Baer, plus an early thirdperiod insurance marker from Tyler Wong, paced the ’Canes to a 4-1 win over the Rebels in Game 6 of the first-round WHL playoff series Sunday night at the Enmax Centrium in Red Deer.
The win tied the series at 33 — forcing a decisive Game 7 Tuesday night at the Enmax Centre in Lethbridge.
“You look at the series, and we’ve led for most of it,” said Hurricanes head coach Brent Kisio. “We lost a few games late. I thought our third period (Sunday) was an excellent third period. I thought we played the right way considering we had the lead.”
“You guys thought the Lethbridge Hurricanes were going to beat the Red Deer Rebels 4-0, because they had 20-some more points in the standings,” said Rebels head coach Brent Sutter.
“Our kids have played hard in this series. At the start of the series, if you’d have said we got to play to Game 7 against this team in their home building, we would take it.”
After a quick turnaround from Saturday’s Game 5 in Lethbridge, and a 5 p.m. start time in Red Deer Sunday, both teams came out flat in the first period. It took the Canes more than 10 minutes to register their first shot on net.
Canes goalie Stuart Skinner made 14 saves before Rebels forward Michael Spacek opened the scoring, with his fourth goal of the series, to put Red Deer up 1-0 with 55 seconds left in the first period.
Skinner then robbed Spacek point blank to keep it 1-0 midway through the second, moments before Vandervlis tied the game with a shot past Rebels goalie Riley Lamb with 6:19 left in the second.
“We were down 1-0 there, and they play a tight game,” said Vandervlis, who is from Red Deer. “I missed just a couple shifts before that so I knew where I was shooting and am lucky it got through.”
Less than four minutes later, the Hurricanes took a 21 lead when Egor Babenko found a wide open Baer, who buried the puck into an open net. That goal stood as the game winner.
With less than a minute left in the second, Brandon Hagel nearly tied it for Red Deer on the penalty kill but missed an open chance.
“You look at the end of the second there, that opportunity put on net; I don’t know if he (Skinner) got a piece of it or not, but it just missed,” said Kisio. “Real timely saves and he was real good all night.”
“We started getting on our heels a little bit,” Sutter said. “We started making some mistakes. They’re a good team and they capitalize on mistakes.”
On the power play, 23 seconds into the third period, captain Wong scored his fifth of the series with a shot over Lamb’s shoulder.
“I wanted to create something,” Wong said. “I saw their d-man go down, and I kind of faked the shot — I like to toe drag, so I pulled that one inside and then got it upstairs.”
The ’Canes went one-forfive on the power play. Red Deer was 0-for-2.
Evan Polei took a fiveminute major, and earned a game misconduct, for a hit on Tanner Nagel 9:20 into the third. Nagel went down for a few moments before being helped off the ice.
The Canes failed to capitalize, but Jadon Joseph added an empty netter with 1:39 left to put the Canes up 4-1 — and send the series back to Lethbridge for Game 7.
“It just shows the character that we have in the room,” Wong said of tying the series after being down 3-1. “We had our backs against the wall. Obviously every game is a must-win. We’re pretty pumped, but we’ve got to re-focus now.”
“Game 7 will be a great experience,” Sutter said. “Let’s just see what happens. You never know. They’ll be ready to play and so will we.”
“They’re going to come in and push hard because it’s a Game 7,” Kisio said. “But considering the situation we were in, going back home for a Game 7 is a real exciting opportunity for us. It’s been an awesome series. It’s been pretty entertaining. It’s going to be probably the same thing for Game 7.”
“We’ve got the best fans in the league at the Enmax,” said Vandervlis. “We’re looking forward to that.”
Notes —
Wong was named first star, Vandervlis second star, and Spacek third. Follow @NKuhlHerald on Twitter