The Rebels' Ben King heads for the puck as Saskatoon's Trevor Wong attempts to deflect it from goaltender Nolan Maier. The Blades' Pavel Bocharov defends against Red Deer's Jhett Larson. (Red Deer Rebels/Rob Wallator)

By Alessia Proietti

3-1 loss vs Saskatoon Blades

Back-to-back losses for Rebels

Nov 26, 2021 | 10:58 PM

The Red Deer Rebels lost their second straight game on Friday, this time 3-1 on home ice at Peavey Mart Centrium against the Saskatoon Blades.

After seeing their five game winning streak come to an end on Wednesday against the Oil Kings, the Rebels came out on Friday and dominated the first period. Following a tripping penalty to Saskatoon’s Ego Sidorov, Ben King seized the opportunity and scored his 15^th goal of the season on goaltender Nolan Maier just under five minutes in. The power play goal was assisted by Arshdeep Bains and Kai Uchacz.

While no other other goals were scored after 20-minutes of play, the Rebels outshot the Blades 16-9.

But the lead ended in the second period when the Blades’ Trevor Wong tied the game and scored his fourth goal of the season on Rebels netminder Connor Ungar at the 6:31 mark, assisted by Brandon Lisowsky and Aidan De La Gorgendiere.

Once again with a fast start and a slow end to the period, shots on goal were 5-0 in favor of the Blades.

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The 1-1 tie was broken in the third period, however, when Saskatoon’s Trevor Wong scored again, now his fifth of the season, almost half way through the final frame. The eventual game-winning goal was assisted by Kyle Crnkovic and Tristen Robins, and put the Blades up 2-1.

In an attempt to tie the game, the Rebels pulled their goalie at 18:39 and with just nine seconds left in the period, Saskatoon’s Kyle Crnkovic scored his 11^th goal of the season, an empty-netter assisted by Trevor Wong.

With a 3-1 score for the Blades, once again the Rebels astonishingly had no shots on goal after the final 20-minutes of play, while the Blades registered eight, for a three period total of 22-16 Saskatoon.

Saskatoon went 0/2 on the power play while Red Deer went 1/3 with the man advantage.

The third star for the game went to the Rebels’ Dallon Melin. The second star to the Blades’ Nolan Maier, and the first star to his teammate Trevor Wong and his two goal performance on the night.

Commenting on the back-to-back losses, Rebels coach Steve Konowalchuk thought that while his team did place effort in the game, it wasn’t perfect, with some aspects to be worked on before their next outing.

“I thought we could have gotten away with a victory there. I thought our guys played a fairly hard game. Their goalie made some good saves. We needed to get some traffic in front of them more of the time. I think we made it easy on them a little bit at times but there was certainly some chances there we had,” he said.

Both teams are second in their divisions with the Rebels’ record dropping to 14-8-1 and the Blades’ improving to 12-7-1.

The Rebels have a chance at redemption on home ice again on Saturday night, when the 9-10-0 Regina Pats pay a visit to the Peavey Mart Centrium.

Face-off is 7:00 p.m.