With only nine games left at Western Financial Place, the Kootenay ICE hosted the Swift Current Broncos.
On Feb. 1 the ICE won 3–2 over the last place Broncos with a pair of goals by Connor McClennon.
McClennon opened the scoring at 9:12 into the first period, for his seventh goal of the season. But, the Broncos didn’t give up and tied the game five minutes left in the frame with a goal from Owen Blocker.
“The turnovers just killed us in the first period by our veteran players. I just thought it was a perimeter first two periods,” said head coach James Patrick.
In the middle period, Christian Riemer had his first goal to give the Broncos the lead.
But, McClennon added his second goal of the night in the third period to tie the game.
“We really bounced back in the second half of the game,” said McClennon. “ We played the right way and we got rewarded for it.”
Jaeger White took a pass off of Peyton Krebs with less than a minute left in the game to solidify the win.
“If you drive the net and the puck is on [Krebs] stick you know he’s going to find you, so I was trying to drive the net and get open for him,” said White about his game-winning goal.
The Kootenay ICE captain Krebs finished the night with two assists.
“We had some energy, we got pucks deep and we won some battles. Then we had some zone time where we had a lot of motion, that led to us getting back into the game,” said Patrick.
The ICE now has 30 points on the 2018/19 season with an 11-32-7-1 record.
Goaltender Jesse Makaj faced 26 shots throughout the night.
“It took him a bit to get going, but then he made some huge saves. Obviously, I didn’t like the first goal, but outside of that, he was outstanding … he kept us in it. It could have been 4-1 instead of 2-1 at one point,” said Patrick.
The ICE are now 3-0 against the Broncos this season and will see them one more time at Western Financial Place on March 1.
The ICE will have a couple of days off until they are back at Western Financial Place to play the Medicine Hat Tigers on Feb. 6, puck drop 7 p.m.
jessica.dempsey@cranbrooktownsman.com
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