On Saturday Oct. 10 in front of a home crowd, the Castlegar Rebels snuffed out the Summerland Steam filling the space between their pipes with pucks.
The final score was 5-3 in the Rebels favour.
The Rebels scored in the first two minutes with a nice wrap around the net by Darren Medeiros, assisted by Chris Breese. But then the hockey fans were treated to a real two for one: Tyler Barrett showed off his fighting skills after been goaded into a mixed martial arts confrontation with the Steam’s Calvin Hadley. The Summerland player was incensed by a clean check laid upon him by Barrett.
“He asked me to go and I thought why not. I hit him and he didn’t like it,” said Barret about the scrap.
The Steam tied the game up on a power play with a goal by Jarrett Malchow with 4:41 left in the first period.
The second period was started with the Steam scoring in the first minute. The Rebels, with the help of their outstanding goalie Joseph Mcleod, took control of the scoreboard letting the big LED lights flicker like Christmas lights as the Rebels scored three in a row. Darren Medeiros, Anthony Oliverio and Nick Headrick all scored for Castlegar.
Summerland came out strong in the third period, but even with five power play opportunities including 40 seconds of a five on three advantage when both Vince Btonti and Daniel Petten shared the Rebels penalty box bench, they were only able to score once.
Rebels Dallas Goodwin cemented the win for Castlegar with a shot that beat the Steam Goalie to put the Rebels on the scoreboard again with a minute and a half to go in the game.
“Lots of pressure out there; nice to see guys sacrifice their bodies to block shots, doing the extra to get pucks out, good team effort,” said Rebels coach Jesse Dorrans.
Addressing the five power play opportunities given to the Steam in the third period, he said, “you know it’s the referee seeing it differently than everybody else in the rink, and then he makes the judgement calls and we have to live with them.”
Dorrans also pointed out the work of Mcleod.
“Joseph every time he steps in-between the pipes he gives us a fighting chance every game.
“They outshot us tonight, but when we had chances we capitalized on them. I was really happy with the forecheck tonight. I think the shots on net are a little inflated with the power plays. Overall I thought it was a really really competitive hockey game between two good hockey teams.”
The Castlegar Rebels are still tied for first place with the Beaver Valley Nitehawks in the Neil Murdoch division of the KIJHL.
Both teams have an eight wins and two losses record for the first 10 games of the season. The Rebels have three games this week including home games at the Castlegar Complex on Wednesday October 14 with the Nelson Leafs and a Saturday game with the North Okanagan Knights October 17.
Puck drops at the Castlegar Complex at 7 p.m.