It was a very happy new year for the Prince Rupert Rampage, who beat the Kitimat Ice Demons 10-3 on Jan. 6 to enter 2018 on a high note.
“It was a good win, we had a short bench tonight but it was pretty good,” said Herb Andreeson, who filled in as coach for the evening. “The passes were hitting tape-to-tape tonight, the breaks were good and it seemed like every time we got a puck on net, stuff was going in.”
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Andreeson said the performance happened despite the fact that the Rampage only had 11 players and could only play two lines as a result. He said the team’s effort under the circumstances was impressive to watch.
“The boys dug deep and kept their legs,” he said.
The game started out back and forth in the first period with both teams working hard to establish themselves in each other’s zones. Kitimat opened the scoring at 4:33 in the first period with a goal from Derek Wakita off assists from Josh Slanina and Giuseppe Bravo. The Rampage were able to respond quickly however as Tyler Ostrom set up Cody Cringan to equalize the score at 5:06 in the first period and Kory Movold scored at 15:13 later in the period to give the Rampage a 1 goal lead going into the second.
In the second period, Movold and Cringan combined to help the Rampage score two goals halfway through the period to help the Rampage take control of the game. First, Movold scored off a Cringan assist at 11:16 in the period before Movold returned the favour, setting up Cringan for a goal second later at 11:11 in the period to make the score 4-1.
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Kitimat responded at 14:56 in the period when Wakita scored again of another assist from Slanina, but the Rampage answered back with two more goals, the first scored by Patrick Robert at the 17:11 mark off the setup from Marcus Atchison and the second also score by Patrick Robert with less than a minute left in the period off the feed by Tyler Matalone and Jacob Santurnbano.
The Rampage outscored the Ice Demons 4-1 in the final period off goals by Cringan, Jordan Weir, Jared Meers and Movold while Zack Carrita scored for Kitimat to lead to the final 10-3 result. The win brings the Rampage’s 2017-2018 record to 6-3-1-3 with 17 points. They next host the Williams Lake Stampeders at the Jim Ciccone Ice Arena for the first of a three-game homestand to end the season.
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