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AUDIO & RECAP: Dragons slay MOB in overtime

 AUDIO: Oil Barons Head Coach Tom Keca discusses the 4-3 overtime loss to Drumheller.

Post-game interview – Oct. 16, 2015 – Tom Keca by Bradley Karp on Mixcloud

Another tight game against Drumheller in overtime, and again it was the home team coming out victorious, that meant a 4-3 overtime win for the Dragons over the MOB last night.

The Oil Barons got two goals from Brett Edwards in the first period and the two teams stayed even at a 2-2 score into the third period after neither team marked in the second.

For the second game in a row the Oil Barons allowed an early goal to start the third period, but this time they didn’t back down even though Matt Muzyka scored his second of the game on the power-play just 56 seconds in.

“Full credit to our players for bouncing back, it would’ve been easy to fold the tent. That’s what happened last night, identical,” said MOB Head Coach Tom Keca on the ROCK 97.9 post-game show. “We gave up a goal early in the third period and you could just see last night that our bench just got deflated, today it didn’t.”

Landon Welykholowa tied the game at 3-3 with 4:15 left in the third, his fifth power-play goal of the season.

“For whatever reason our guys kept to the plan […] I’m proud of our players today because we did a lot of good things that we haven’t been doing. We chipped a lot of pucks in deep, we limited the amount of turnovers which we felt was key, we tried to stifle their stretch passes on their breakouts.”

Eric Szudor stopped 22 of 26 shots faced, he’ll be having nightmares about a Levi Wunder knuckle-puck that fluttered and fooled the MOB goaltender late in the first period to tie the game. Otherwise Szudor was solid, on the other side Jonny Hogue was really good shuffling off 31 of 34 shots faced.

“We’re right at the tipping point here, we’re teetering where some guys are starting to question what we’re doing and we’re starting to question whether everyone is buying but today the effort that we got from the 20 guys was great,” said Keca.

Keca’s line of Edwards, Ben Sharf, and Cole Todd was excellent, all three touched the puck on the Edwards goals, while Lindsey MacLellan had a strong outing with three blocked shots, a number of hits and forced turnovers in the neutral and offensive zones.

“There’s a kid [MacLellan] that is just willing to sacrifice and do whatever it takes to get the job done. He laid down there in the last 20 seconds of the second period and got a shot block for us, got a huge shot block down on one knee.”

Fort McMurray was one for four on the man-advantage, while killing off two of three penalties.

The Oil Barons will look to split the road trip in half and pick up three of a possible six points against the Olds Grizzlys tonight. Puck drop is at 7 p.m., you can listen live on ROCK 97.9.