Rockets edge Royals in epic shootout to stay in 1st place
Kelowna ends 2017 on 5-game winning streak
It doesn’t get any more dramatic than that in the regular season.
Billed as a first-place showdown, the Kelowna Rockets and Victoria Royals delivered a barnburner, with Leif Mattson bookending the scoring by netting the decisive shootout goal as Kelowna extended its WHL-best home winning streak to 12 games in a 3-2 victory on Saturday night at Prospera Place.
“Both teams competed, and I think the fans probably left here thinking they watched a pretty good game,” Rockets head coach Jason Smith said of the 5,631 in attendance, just shy of a second straight home sellout — capacity is 6,007 — after the biggest crowd of the season (6,238) watched the Rockets beat the rival Kamloops Blazers in similar fashion, 2-1 in a shootout last Wednesday.
“The energy in the building was great — that’s what junior hockey is about,” Smith continued. “As coaches, we try not to get too revved up and involved in every single play that goes on, but it was a fun game to watch from the bench, and the two teams played hard.
“We did some good things throughout the game and we had a few blunders, but it’s great when you win.”
As a result, nobody went home disappointed — besides the Royals — and everybody got their money’s worth in terms of entertainment value.
They got to see Griffen Outhouse’s diving glove save to rob Jack Cowell of an open-net goal in the final minute of regulation — ranking right up there with Brodan Salmond’s reaching-back paddle stop for the WHL’s save of the season so far.
The second biggest save on this night was made by Rockets defenceman James Hilsendager, who somehow denied Royals leading scorer Matthew Phillips in overtime when rookie goalie Roman Basran got caught out of the net. Basran beat Phillips in a race to the loose puck just inside Kelowna’s zone but turned it over and suddenly Phillips was in alone on Hilsendager.
“That was just crazy. Roman came out of the net there and (Hilsendager) did a good job of getting back and he made a big save and it ended up saving us another point,” said Mattson. “Any time we play a divisional rival, it’s good to get as many points as we can. We’re pretty close with Victoria right now, so it was good to get that extra point in the shootout.”
Basran produced his share of heroics between the pipes too, stoning Tyler Soy’s deke attempt on a shorthanded breakaway late in the second period, then weathering a barrage to start the third when the Royals were outshooting the Rockets 13-2 to the midpoint before Phillips finally netted the equalizer on a spinning shot from the corner that snuck between the pads of Basran, who had lost his stick in stopping the previous sequence.
That’s when the game really took off — tied 2-2 for the final five minutes of regulation, throughout the five-minute 3-on-3 overtime, and into the shootout.
Of course, that skills competition of a tiebreaker is always high drama.
“The shootouts were brought in because they’re a good way to finish off a game and the fans love it,” said Smith. “It’s exciting . . . you can work at it in practice and hopefully get good results when you do it. But is there a favourite when you get into the shootout? No, I don’t think so.”
The Royals scored on their first two shots, but Basran was able to stay composed and stop the next three, while Nolan Foote and Carsen Twarynski replied for the Rockets in the second and third rounds before Mattson won it with a nifty deke on Outhouse in the fifth round.
“That’s kind of a move I grew up doing,” said Mattson. “I wasn’t sure what to do on Outhouse . . . but I went in and I slipped it five-hole and it worked out.”
For his part, Basran gave an honest assessment of the shootout.
“The first two, I was kind of like ‘oh no’ and I was really nervous, but the last three I was just like ‘I’m just here to have fun’ and stopped all of them,” said Basran, who recorded his fifth win since getting called up from the majormidget Okanagan Rockets when Brodan Salmond suffered a knee injury in early November. “It’s lots of fun, the boys are great, and just the crowd, the energy in the stands, it’s just a blast playing in this league.”
Saturday was quite the opportunity for the 16-year-old often touted as the franchise’s goalie of the future, facing a high-powered Royals team that routed the Rockets 8-3 in their previous visit to Prospera Place back on Oct. 4. Basran proved up to the challenge of starting the biggest game of the season to date.
Getting the victory with 36 saves — plus three more in the shootout — was another sign of Basran’s potential. This performance might have topped his 38-save shutout in his home debut, a 5-0 win over Medicine Hat on Nov. 25.
“It was a wild game, definitely more exciting than the other one, that’s for sure,” Basran said, comparing the two early-career highlights.
It was impressive, rising to the occasion and persevering in the shootout — making amends for that slip-up in overtime, where Basran mishandled the puck and almost gifted a goal to Phillips, only to be bailed out by Hilsendager.
“If you asked him, he maybe would have done something different,” Smith said of Basran’s high-risk decision. “Going out and getting the puck is one thing, then I would have liked to see him shoot it down the ice rather than try to make a play. But he did lots of good things in the game, he made some saves and played with confidence and gave us an opportunity to win.”
Mattson also opened the scoring in the game’s opening minute and Kyle Topping tallied the other go-ahead goal, with a power-play marker in the second period, for the Rockets (23-11-2-1), who finished 2017 on a five-game overall winning streak. Kelowna hasn’t lost since Kole Lind returned from Canada’s world-junior selection camp to score a hat trick in Prince Albert on Dec. 15, enjoying continued success without captain and top defenceman Cal Foote and first-line centre Dillon Dube, who both made the cut for Canada.
Kelowna hasn’t lost at home since Oct. 20, a 3-1 defeat to Portland that the Rockets avenged the next night with a convincing 7-2 triumph — the first of a dozen wins in a row at Prospera Place to cap the calendar year.
Kelowna is entering 2018 in first place in both the B.C. Division — three points up on Victoria, with two games in hand — and the entire Western Conference. This, despite starting the campaign with a 4-5-1-1 record through 11 games prior to that pounding of Portland on Oct. 21.
The Rockets have also played without Lind — their leading scorer with 47 points, including 20 goals — for nine games, seven as he was recovering from mononucleosis to end November and two more in mid-December while auditioning for the national junior team.
Cal Foote and Dube have already missed seven games while representing Canada and that total will likely reach 10, assuming they don’t play this weekend — at home to Seattle on Friday or in Calgary on Sunday.
They won’t be back in time for Wednesday’s home game against the Tri-City Americans (7 p.m., Prospera Place) regardless of today’s quarter-final result against Switzerland in Buffalo, N.Y.
“It’s great for our guys who are getting to play a little bit more,” Smith said of Kelowna’s depth players gaining valuable experience in the absence of those leaders. “Any time you go through a stretch where you lose players — by injury or by going off to the world juniors — it gives other guys an opportunity to step up and our guys have stepped up and played well.”
ICE CHIPS: Tyler Soy had Victoria’s other goal in regulation, tying the contest 1-1 in the first period, and Outhouse stopped 30 shots for the Royals (21-14-3-1), who lost in a shootout for the first time this season. Victoria prevailed in its only previous tiebreaker, 6-5 over Vancouver on Oct. 28, with Phillips scoring that winner . . . . The three stars were Basran, Outhouse and Phillips, who was the best skater on the ice from start to finish, dangerous on every shift. . . . Kelowna scratched C Dillon Dube (WJHC, Canada), RHD Cal Foote (WJHC, Canada), G Brodan Salmond (knee, week-to-week), LW Erik Gardiner (concussion, day-to-day), RHD Konrad Belcourt and LW Colum McGauley.