Game two of the West Kootenay Conference final could not have gone much better for the home team in Castlegar Saturday night through 20 minutes.
The Castlegar Rebels claimed a 4 – 0 lead over the Golden Rockets as the teams went to the dressing rooms at the intermission.
The first Rebels shot on the starting goaltender, Jamie Leonard, took just six seconds.
It wasn’t long after, at 16:43 of the first, that Erik Alden got the team’s first goal. The early momentum was all Rebels with forward Darren Medeiros narrowly missing a wrister of his own moments later.
Even a tripping minor on Rebels defenceman Riley Ostoforoff failed to result in a goal for Golden.
In the last five minutes of play in the first, the Rebels would score three more.
Jamie Vlanich from Stuart Walton at 4:38, another from Bryan Lubin 31 seconds later and then the third at 2:08 from Aaron Brewer on the power play, after nice feeds from Travis Wellman and Dylan Bowerman.
The second period was all about sending messages.
The first message was from Golden with a change in net.
Cody Boeckman took over from Leonard but just 2:31 into his night, Wellman dribbled one past him at the crease to make it a 5 – 0 Rebels lead. Assists went to Alden and Vlanich.
Then the messages got rough. Two fights and a flurry of penalties on both sides resulted in game misconducts to Rebels’ Brett Leidl and Braydon Horcoff and Rockets Marc Lepine and Jacob Bergeron.
The Horcoff and Bergeron scrap went on for some time with heavy blows landed from both players. It was only stopped when the linesmen saw a break and stepped in.
The next message offered a glimmer of hope for the Rockets. Josh Jewell got a short-handed marker with just 56 seconds left in the second on a nice feed from Felix Larouche.
But that message wasn’t received on the Rebels bench.
Just 37 seconds later Wellman got his second of the night past Boeckman; a beautiful wrist shot after breaking free from a pack on passing from Hunter Jenerou and Dylan Bowerman.
At the end of 40 minutes, the score was 6 – 1 for the Rebels.
At 10:28 of the third, Riley Ostoforoff scored to make it a 7 – 1 lead.
Kody Disher and Josh Jewell received majors and game misconducts for a fight at centre ice and there were numerous other boarding, roughing, slashing and goaltender interference calls.
Jordan Gluck gets the win in net for the Rebels and they will take a 2 – 0 series lead into Golden on Monday, Mar. 18 at 7:30 p.m. MST. (Castlegar fans: remember Golden clocks are an hour ahead.)
