Caden Price scored the overtime winner for the Kelowna Rockets in a 4-3 victory over the Vancouver Giants on Friday night at the Langley Events Centre, in a game that saw the Giants battle back from a 3-0 third period deficit to earn a point.
Head Coach Manny Viveiros said the Giants “certainly deserved to lose.”
“We weren’t very good the first two periods,” Viveiros commented.
“For whatever reason, we weren’t ready to start on time. That’s a learning lesson here. If we’re not ready to start on time, you’re going to get burned. It doesn’t matter who it is. Kelowna is a good team. They have our number. I thought their best players tonight were better than our best players. We need our big boys, especially in these types of games, when it’s tight checking, to make that difference. We did in the third, we did, but we can’t just play 20 minutes.”
Ty Halaburda (18th), Jaden Lipinski (17th) and Cameron Schmidt (23rd) scored for the Giants in the loss, as Vancouver out-shot the visitors 37-28.
Max Graham scored twice for Kelowna, while Tij Iginla had the other goal for the Rockets.
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Giants got on the board first on a power play at the 10:47 mark of the third period, after Halaburda found the rebound at the right circle and beat Kykkanen five-hole.
Then, less than a minute later, Halaburda fed Lipinski in the high slot off the rush, who one-timed it home on the blocker side to make it a one-goal game.
The Rockets had to call a timeout to curb the momentum, but it only worked for a few minutes.
On the tying goal, Schmidt carried the puck into the zone on the left wing, dangled around one defender and then fanned on his shot, but was still able to get the puck towards the net. With all sorts of bodies in the crease looking for the puck, Halaburda was able to poke the puck to the opposite side of the net, where Schmidt was undetected and able to fire the puck in to tie the game 3-3 and force overtime.
But, with 1:27 remaining in the extra frame, Price would take a pass from Andrew Cristall and score his 11th of the season from the slot to give the Rockets the extra point.
Halaburda and Lipinski were named first and second stars of the game.
Tonight, Saturday, Giants are in Kamloops at 6 p.m. and then will finish their 3-in-3 on Sunday with a matinee at the LEC against Seattle at 4 p.m.
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