Keep believing.
That was Red Deer Rebels head coach Dave Struch’s message to his team following a 2-1 win over the Calgary Hitmen in the shootout on Friday night at the Centrium.
With the win, the Rebels are 11 points back of the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference with 11 games left.
Their chances are slim but not impossible.
“Keep believing every night,” Struch said.
“We have to play like this. We just mentioned to them that it’s been a long time since we’ve had a full line up and we’ve been able to challenge and push each other to play the way we played tonight. It doesn’t matter where we are in the standings or where we are with games left, we have to play this way every single day.”
After no one scored in overtime, forwards Matthew Gard and Ty Coupland scored in the shootout. Meanwhile, goaltender Chase Wutzke stopped two out of three shooters to beat their central division rivals. He also made 20 saves on 21 shots.
Struch said it was the best game they’ve played this season.
“We did a lot of good things right from Chase Wutzke and out. Obviously, it was a big win for playing 60 plus minutes,” Struch added.
“The way we played away from the puck and the way we checked. We know they’ve got great depth so we needed every guy right from our fourth line guys of Parmar, Schmidt, and the young guy Milford. They got good minutes tonight and they played at times against their top guys. The energy we built from blocking shots, giving hits, taking hits, and even the missed opportunities in the second period. You don’t like to see that but it gave us momentum and energy.”
After a scoreless first period, the Calgary Hitmen broke the tie with 13:26 left in the second. Forward Rylan Ng beat Wutzke to take the first lead of the contest.
The Rebels answered with 4:51 to go in the middle frame with a goal from centre ice.
After Gleb Semenov won the faceoff in the neutral zone, the puck went back to defenceman Luke Vlooswyk who passed it over to defenceman Derek Thurston. He fired the puck on net from the centre ice logo and his slapshot blew past goaltender Anders Miller who did not expect the shot.
Red Deer continued to apply pressure for the rest of the period but couldn’t bury a go-ahead goal.
Both teams were held scoreless in the third period and in overtime, but Red Deer got the upper hand in the shootout.
Beckett Hamilton was up first for Red Deer but did not score. Meanwhile, Ben Kindel scored for the Hitmen on a back hand move.
Rebels Matthew Gard answered as Red Deer’s second shooter and Calgary’s Oliver Tulk was shut down by Wutzke.
Forward Ty Coupland won it for the Rebels as the teams third shooter and Wutzke came up with a big save on Tanner Howe to secure the victory.
Wutzke said postgame that it was an awesome win for the team.
“It was good to get that win against a good team like that so it felt good,” he said. “I felt confident and the guys were playing good in front of me so just all around we were having a good game.”
The Hitmen were riding a five game winning streak coming into Red Deer and were winners of eigh of their last 10 games.
This was an important win to keep Red Deer’s playoff hopes alive.
“Everybody wants to make the playoffs and we want to get in there. We’re just going to keep battling and working as hard as we can,” Wutzke added.
The Rebels will be back in action on Saturday night when they host the Kelowna Rockets at the Centrium at 7 p.m.
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