Photo: Rob Wallator

By Kael Clark

WHL

Rebels fall 5-2 to Calgary to start home and home series

Jan 26, 2020 | 10:11 AM

The Red Deer Rebels fell 5-2 to the Calgary Hitmen at the Westerner Park Centrium Saturday night in the first of three meetings between the two teams over the next week.

“It wasn’t a great game by us,” said Rebels GM/head coach Brent Sutter. “Full marks to them (Hitmen), they played well enough to win and we didn’t play well enough to give ourselves a chance to win.”

Calgary opened the scoring in the game with captain Mark Kastelic netted his 22^nd goal on a tip-in 5:12 into the first period.

The Hitmen added a second goal on a five-on-three man advantage in the second period. Jett Woo faked a shot that froze Rebels defenders, allowing him to set up Riley Stotts for an easy goal into an open net at the 7:56 mark.

After a scramble in front of the net with just over a minute to go in the second period, the puck popped out in front of the goal, catching Rebels goaltender Ethan Anders out of position and allowing Kastelic to tally his second goal of the game for a 3-0 Hitmen lead.

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Just over five minutes into the final frame a broken play at the Rebel blue line allowed Josh Prokop to sneak into the zone unnoticed and outwait Anders before sliding the puck past him for a 4-0 lead.

Red Deer finally found the back of the net not long after as Ben King sniped a shot over the glove of Hitmen goalie Brayden Peters for his ninth of the season.

With four minutes to play in the third period, the Rebels scored to make it a 4-2 game when Jace Isley tucked home his second goal of the year.

The Rebels then pulled Anders in favour of the extra attacker, but Stotts snuffed out any futher hopes of a comeback with an empty net goal from 100 feet out with two minutes left to play.

Calgary outshot Red Deer 30-22 on the night. Red Deer was 0-for-4 on the power play while Calgary was 1-for-3.

“I didn’t like our game at all tonight,” said Brent Sutter. “I thought our details weren’t very good. Our positional play, our play with the puck… when we had it we didn’t have four other guys working for the guy who had it. “We did a lot of looping tonight, not a lot of stopping and starting.”

The Rebels and Hitmen battle again Sunday in Calgary at 2 p.m. You can listen to the game live on 106.7 THE DRIVE.