Goalie Ryan Kubic standing tall
Back-to-back wins — look at them now.
The Saskatoon Blades have won two straight for the first time this season thanks to victories Friday in Swift Current and Saturday at home against the visiting Brandon Wheat Kings.
“For us, that’s huge,” said Blades head coach Dean Brockman following a convincing 4-1 win over the Wheaties at the SaskTel Centre on Saturday night.
“Assessing things, that’s probably our two best games of the year, and you get two wins. A lot of guys committed themselves to things we should have probably eight games ago, but it’s good it came this way.”
Saskatoon now boasts a 5-7-10 record in the Western Hockey League as the team hits the highway for three games in Alberta against the Lethbridge Hurricanes, Medicine Hat Tigers and Edmonton Oil Kings.
“We’ve found success on the road and we just have to continue it,” said Brockman, whose team is 3-2-1 in away games. “It’s only two wins, but it’s certainly an encouraging sign and hopefully we can keep it going.”
The play of goaltender Ryan Kubic is certainly encouraging. He came up huge in both wins, earning first-star honours both Friday and Saturday.
“Kubes (Ryan Kubic) was good both nights and made the big saves,” said Brockman. “We didn’t have a lot of sustained pressure, but he made some big saves to keep the momentum on our side. “Lots of bounces went our way.” In Saturday’s game, the Blades built up period leads of 2-0 and 4-0 on a pair of goals by Cameron Hebig and singles by Tyler Lees and Chase Wouters.
“It’s pretty special to get back in the lineup, to be playing well and scoring goals and other things,” said Lee, who made his season debut Friday with the game-winning goal in a 4-3 decision over Swift Current.
“I’m happy about it, that’s for sure.”
The goal by rookie Lees proved to be the game winner, his second in as many games.
“How do you beat that?” said Brockman, acknowledging the play of the team’s so-called bottom six fowards.
“(Dryden Michaud) is on a threegame point streak. You need contributions from everybody and they gave us that, for sure.”
Hebig opened the scoring with a power play marker at 15:07. Lees made it 2-0, finishing off some nifty passing work between Dryden Michaud and Michael Farren at 17:13.
Wouters’ slap shot trickled past Brandon goalie Logan Thompson midway through the second period after Rubic had robbed Ty Lewis with a wicked glove save.
Hebig’s second tally came with 1:13 left in the second period while crashing the net on a partial breakaway after he was hauled down.
Kubic continued making big stops, denying Lewis and Stelio Mattheos, among others. He had a shutout going until the final minute, when Tanner Kaspick scored on the power play with 44 seconds left on the clock.
Brandon out-shot Saskatoon 33-23.
The Blades went 1 for 2 with the man advantage. The Wheaties were 1 for 5.
The paid attendance Saturday was announced at 3,058.
On Friday, Hebig notched his first-ever WHL hat-trick in the win over the Broncos. Kubic stopped 33 of 36 shots for the victory, including back-to-back stops on penalty shots.
Lees scored his first goal of the season for the Blades, who were out-shot 36-33.
“Swift’s such a good team. To beat them on the road is so good,” said Lees, who had been sidelined for the past two months due to injury.
“It’s really big. It’s a big four points. Obviously our record wasn’t very good for the first little bit, but we’re turning it around, so it’s really good.”