AUDO: Oil Barons Head Coach Tom Keca discusses a 5-2 loss to the Drayton Valley Thunder on Jan. 23, 2016.
Instead of flipping the script from Friday’s 4-3 overtime loss in Drayton Valley, on Saturday the Oil Barons stuck to the same one but made a few more errors in a 5-2 losing effort.
For the second night in a row the Oil Barons carried a one-nothing lead into the second period, they’d end up blowing the lead just 1:46 in but a Jackson McKinstry marker restored the one goal advantage about four minutes later.
Then Drayton Valley poured it on scoring three goals in 5:38 and ran away with second period as they cruised to victory.
“I thought maybe the first period was our most complete period that we’ve had in a very long time I thought that we did a great job getting pucks to the net, it was probably the most offence we’ve created since… I can’t remember,” said Oil Barons Head Coach Tom Keca on the ROCK 97.9 post-game show.
Shawn Weber scored his second in back-to-back games along with McKinstry who notched his third in his last four for the Oil Barons.
“We get caught watching and it’s one of those things that we haven’t learned, we’re not a team that can take shifts off or stop our feet from moving,” said Keca of the MOB’s second period struggles. “Our first instinct has to be to skate and get back to the house and when you don’t you give up goals.”
Drayton Valley saw a pair of goals from Troy Rapuano along with singles from Matt McNeil, Jean-Francois Plourde, and Brodie Clowes.
Rapuano’s second goal was an empty net marker.
Both teams were scoreless on the power-play with the Oil Barons getting five chances to Drayton’s four.
Eric Szudor was lights out turning aside 37 of 41 shots fired his way. Matt Berlin was equally as good for the Thunder especially in an extended Oil Barons two-man advantage, he stopped 26 of 28 shots faced.
The MOB’s trio of affiliated players was once again impressive as Quinton Sudom, Mackenzie Mindus and Jayden Pannu all played simple, hard-working and effective games.
“We’ll get [Monday] off, we’ll have our typical Monday practice, we’ll do our dry-land, we’ll prepare and again now we’re at a point where when you get those south teams that you haven’t seen since very early in the season we’ll do a little bit of film on them but we’re more concerned with making sure everybody knows our forecheck and our neutral-zone and our [defensive] zone,” said Keca.
The Oil Barons host the Olds Grizzlys Friday and the Okotoks Oilers Saturday. Both games are scheduled to start at 7:45 p.m.
Saturday night will also be the draw for the Oil Barons Dream Home lottery. The deadline is Sunday, January 24, 2016 at 11:59 p.m. MST. More details on the lottery and a link to purchase tickets online can be found here.
