Wheat Kings blank Wildcats at Memorial Cup
Two days after they were blown out in their own arena, the Brandon Wheat Kings rolled back into contention at the MasterCard Memorial Cup with a 4-0 win over the Moncton Wildcats on Sunday in Brandon, Man.
Forward Toni Rajala scored a pair for the Wheat Kings, who won a game at the Canadian junior championship tournament for the first time in 14 years. Jacob De Serres recorded the shutout for Brandon, whose grateful fans waved yellow towels above their heads for the final minute of regulation.
"There's nothing better for a goalie then to bounce back, to battle back and brush everything off," De Serres said. "We had a little adversity, and I think it showed a lot of resilience, from myself and my team."
The Wheat Kings have never won the tournament in its four previous appearances. The team came closest 31 years ago, when a roster stocked with future NHLers such as Brian Propp and Brad McCrimmon lost the championship game in overtime to Peterborough.
The franchise had not won a game at the event since 1996.
Eternal debate
Brandon and Moncton opened the tournament with the kind of losses that fuel the eternal debate: Is it more painful to get blown out — defeat by a thousand cuts — or is it worse to be undone by a single, critical bad bounce?
The Wheat Kings were blasted from the ice in the opening game on Friday, falling 9-3 to the defending champion Windsor Spitfires. Windsor was only two goals shy of matching a single-game tournament record for the most goals scored by one team.
Moncton lost the following afternoon in a manner equally as shocking. The Wildcats let a 3-0 lead dissolve in the third period of their game against the Calgary Hitmen, falling 5-4 after a funny hop along the boards led to the decisive goal with 78 seconds left.
"We're playing good teams, stronger teams than we're seeing in our league," Wildcats coach Danny Flynn said. "We're doing our very best. The teams we're playing are very, very good."
Wildcats goaltender Nicola Riopel, 21, was still grappling with the turn of events more than a half-hour after the game. He had watched the replay, but could not figure out how a basic shot around the end boards bounced out of the corner and into his crease, costing his team the game.
Swimming in rough water
He still seemed distracted in the first period against Brandon on Sunday. He was beaten 10 minutes into the game, and seemed to be swimming in rough water as the Wheat Kings continued to press.
Brandon took the 1-0 lead at the end of a two-on-one, as forward Aaron Lewadniuk slid a pass across the face of goal to Rajala, who flipped a backhand on net. It was a run-of-the-mill shot that the goaltender might have stopped with a quicker move across the crease.
And the struggle did not end there for Riopel. He was looking skyward during a break in the play a few moments later, just in time to catch the replay of Calgary's strange goal as it played one more time on the big screens above centre ice.
The end boards toyed with him again in the second period. Brandon took a 2-0 lead after a shot bounced off the boards behind Riopel, freezing him as Rajala scored his second of the game on the rebound.
Brayden Schenn scored on the power-play four minutes later, forcing the Wildcats to call a timeout. Brent Raedeke gave the host team a 4-0 lead two minutes into the third period.
"Obviously, the big Calgary come-from-behind win against them yesterday would deflate their tires a little bit," Schenn said. "Not to take anything away from them, but I thought our team played real well today."