The Castlegar Rebels find themselves one loss away from elimination in the playoffs after a third-consecutive loss against the Beaver Valley Nitehawks on Thursday night.
The Nitehawks’ Damon Kramer, assisted by Kevan McBean, scored the first goal two minutes in.
The Rebels struggled against the Nitehawks’ defence throughout the period, but still managed some good shots on goal — they outshot the Nitehawks 14-7. But even the Rebels strongest shots on net were denied by the Nitehawks’ goalie Liam Coulter.
The Rebel’s goalie Tanner Douglas blocked shot after shot from the Nitehawks in the second, psyching himself up on a timeout midway through the period, but shortly after the two teams came back onto the ice, Connor Seib, assisted by Aiden Browell and Sam Swanson, scored the Nitehawks’ second goal of the game with a shot that bounced off of Douglas’s blocker and his own defender before going into the net.
Towards the end of the period, the Nitehawks took two penalties 31 seconds apart. On the penalty kill, the Nitehawks shot the puck into the Rebels’ zone, but Douglas fired it right back to Ren Mason, who shot it to John Moeller, who scored the Rebels’ first goal of the game with 0.8 seconds left on the clock.
Then less than a minute into the third, Mason, assisted by Dallas Goodwin and Moeller, went bar down to tie the score.
But midway through the period, the Nitehawks’ Bradley Ross scored an unassisted goal after a giveaway caught Douglas behind the net, putting his team back in the lead.
The Rebels fought to find the net, but ran out of time, and the Nitehawks won 3-2.
Following the game, head coach and general manager Bill Rotheisler said he thought his team played well even if they didn’t pull off a win.
“I thought we played well enough to win. I thought we were the better team and that’s why you have a seven-game,” he said. “It sounds cliché, but you’ve got to try to outplay them all the games because you’ve got take into account the bounces that don’t go your way.”
Rotheisler was referring to the bad bounce in the second.
“I thought we outplayed them, especially in the second and the third, and unfortunately there was a miscommunication … and we had opportunities to clear it, not Dougie, but the team had opportunities, Moeller had an opportunity to clear it and couldn’t bear down,” he said. “So they got bogged down and then Dougie made an unfortunate decision to keep the puck alive when we didn’t have the energy there.”
The coach also said that the coaching staff should have made a line change sooner as well.
Headed into Game 6, Rotheisler was feeling good about his team’s chances of pushing the series to Game 7.
“We’re focused, we’re happy with our play and we as a team and as staff, we’ve already discussed it. We’re all on the same page, we know what we have to do better,” he said. “We’re prepared and ready to do it.”
The Nitehawks lead the series 3-2 and Game 6 starts at 7:30 p.m. on Friday at Beaver Valley Arena.
