(rdnewsNOW file photo)

By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

66 down, 2 to go

Oil Kings beat Rebels 6-4 spoiling King’s milestone game

Apr 9, 2022 | 5:10 PM

A matinée date with the Edmonton Oil Kings resulted in a 6-4 Red Deer Rebels defeat Saturday afternoon.

The two teams are winding down the regular season, locked into first and second place, respectively, in the Central Division, ahead of the 2022 WHL Playoffs.

Coming in, they’d met eight times this season, Red Deer sporting a 5-3-0-0 record to Edmonton’s 3-3-2-0. Red Deer was 8-1-0-1 in their last 10, while Edmonton was 6-3-1-0, each of which include one Red Deer regulation win on April 2 and a Red Deer OT win on April 3.

The first period Saturday was a roller coaster for both.

Justin Sourdif (24th and 25th) scored twice for the Oil Kings, at 8:50 and 14:19 to put the home team up 2-0.

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Before the period was out, however, Red Deer struck back — first Christoffer Sedoff (8th) scored a power play marker at 17:47, and then Jace Isley (15th) potted one with 22 seconds left in the frame. Sedoff, Jace Weir, Ben King and Arshdeep Bains picked up assists on the pair of goals that saw the game go to break with the Rebels and Oil Kings even.

In the second, the top-10 in the CHL Edmonton squad opened things up.

Tyler Horstmann (3rd) scored at 4:09, Dylan Guenther (43rd) netted a power play goal at 7:32, and Carter Souch (21st) scored with the man advantage at 8:20 to give the Oil Kings a 5-2 lead.

At 17:32 of the middle frame, the WHL’s leading scorer, Ben King (50th), got the Rebels to within two, this goal coming again on the power play. Sedoff got one assist for his third point of the night, and Bains the other.

With his 50th of the season, King becomes just the fifth Red Deer Rebel to hit the half-century mark for goals in a single regular season. B.J. Young has the record at 58, which he scored in 1996-97. Kyle Wanvig had 55 in 2000-01, Craig Reichert had 52 in 1993-94 and Dean Tiltgen had 50 in 1992-93.

Unfortunately for Red Deer, there wasn’t much time to celebrate King’s milestone, as Guenther (44th) potted his second of the night with just 48 seconds on the clock, and it was 6-3 Edmonton after 40 minutes.

The Rebels weren’t going down without a fight though, and in the third, got one back at the 5:42 mark — Arshdeep Bains (39th) adding to his league-leading point total. King and Blake Gustafson assisted, and it was 6-4.

That was, as they say, as close as they’d come.

Edmonton fired 53 pucks at Connor Ungar (21-9-1-0) on Saturday, while Red Deer managed a paltry by comparison 28 shots at Kolby Hay (15-4-1-0), plus another three at Sebastian Cossa. Cossa came in to start the third period for Edmonton, but only played 5:37 before Hay returned to the game. Each team was 2/5 on the power play.

Ben King also hit 100 points in Saturday’s game, making him just the 11th player in franchise history to hit the century mark in a single regular season. Linemate Arshdeep Bains hit 100 earlier this month.

With two games to go on the season, Arshdeep Bains sits atop the league points race with 105 points (39G, 66A). King is right behind him with 102 (50G, 52A). Next closest, and the only player who could reasonably catch either of them is Logan Stankoven of Kamloops, which has three games remaining, including tonight. Stankoven has 99 points. In fourth is Saskatoon’s Kyle Crnkovic with 93 points (one game remaining).

Over the course of nine games head-to-head this season, Red Deer has scored 27 goals to Edmonton’s 31. They close out the season series in the final game of the year, next Saturday, April 16 at the Centrium.

Before that though, Red Deer heads to Calgary to face the Hitmen at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 13. The broadcast for that game will be live on 106.7 REWIND Radio starting at 6:50.