Rockets kick off 7-game road trip

The Kelowna Rockets kicked off a sevengame WHL road trip in style on Friday, posting a 3-2 overtime win against the Tri-City Americans in Kennewick, Wash.

The winner came from Kole Lind, who scored his team-leading 16th of the season with 1:43 left in the extra session. Lind scored from Devante Stephens on Kelowna’s 44th shot against Tri-City netminder Evan Sarthou.

“Beating a team that’s this good to start off, our trip is obviously on the right foot,” Kelowna assistant coach Kris Mallette told AM1150 after the game.

“This is going to teach our young men a lot of lessons and hopefully strengthen our group.

“The first one is huge for us. You don’t want to be licking your wounds right off the bat. Obviously our guys are going to have a better bus ride (to Cranbrook for tonight’s game).”

Nolan Foote gave Kelowna (18-11-1-0) the lead with 1:06 left in the first period.

After Tri-City (18-12-2-0) scored a pair of power-play goals to take a 2-1 lead, Calvin Thurkauf evened the game at 8:44 of the second period.

Kelowna dominated from the start of the third period, outshooting Tri-City 15-1 in that frame and 4-0 in overtime.

Michael Herringer made 19 saves overall in the Kelowna net.

“The message that we’ve sent to everybody. . . is we’ve got tot take care of our own zone,” Mallette continued, while adding the Rockets almost got in trouble with some poor decisions at the blue-line — but we able to recover.

“I thought that those decisions were shaky at times, but as the game wore on . . . we were doing things better, a lot better. To be able to hold a team like this at bay with the team we’ve got, is pretty cool.”

Kelowna is back in B.C. tonight to face Kootenay (6-18-7-1), before heading to Alberta for games in Lethbridge on Sunday and Medicine Hat on Tuesday.