(Red Deer Rebels/ Taylor Lachance)

By Ian Gustafson

4-0

Rebels win streak comes to an end in shut out loss to Hurricanes

Feb 8, 2025 | 10:00 PM

The Red Deer Rebels struggled to stay out of the penalty box and the Hurricanes made them pay in a 4-0 loss on Saturday night at the Centrium.

Leo Braillard, captain Brayden Yager, and Brayden Edwards all scored on the man advantage for Lethbridge in the shut out victory. Hurricanes goaltender Koen Cleaver made 25 saves for his second shut out of the year.

Rebels head coach Dave Struch said if his team had stayed out of the penalty box, it could of been a different result.

“Five on five it was a 1-0 game,” he said. “If we stayed out of the box, you know we had a chance. You look at the shot clock, you look at our opportunities and theirs, on the powerplay their scorers scored. Right off the hop the discipline side of things hurt us but other than that, five on five we did some really good things.”

The Hurricanes took a 2-0 lead late in the first period with back-to-back goals on a four-minute powerplay.

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The first goal came with 3:03 left off the stick of Braillard in the slot finishing a nifty passing play in the top corner from Yager and Noah Chadwick.

Nearly two minutes later, Edwards knocked in the puck into the open net after he stretched out for a pass from Braillard.

The Rebels had a number of high quality scoring chances in the second period but were unable to buy a goal.

A little under two minutes into the third period, Yager scored his team’s third powerplay goal of the evening. The Hurricanes managed to finish the game three-for-five on the man advantage.

Meanwhile, the Rebels failed to score on just one powerplay opportunity.

“Every team is working on special teams,” he said. “For us, we get the one opportunity of the night and we didn’t create enough on it. We have to continue to work hard so we can get more opportunities.”

The Hurricanes extended their lead to 4-0 with 8:41 left in the game after defenceman Carsen Adair jumped on a big rebound to score his second of the season.

“When we see an opportunity like we had tonight against a good team, and we were in the game, we needed to take advantage of some things we did well the last couple of games,” he said. “Those things we ended up chasing, taking penalties, and again that’s what hurts us.”

Chase Wutzke started for Red Deer in net and made 24 saves on 28 shots. Red Deer won’t have much time to think about the loss as they’ll host the Regina Pats on Tuesday at the Centrium at 7 p.m.

Red Deer is now in ninth place in the Eastern Conference standings, 12 points back of a playoff spot with a 19-25-4-2 record.

The Rebels have their eyes set on pushing for that final spot but are also focused on finding consistency in their game.

“Because of the guys who’ve been out of the lineup this year, the young guys have had a great opportunity to develop,” Struch added. “You look at guys like Gard and Vlooswyk, they’ve been given ample opportunity to play against other teams top groups. At this time of the year there should be some consistency in our game.”