Blades feed off big crowd for 4th straight win

The Saskatoon Blades are making it known, that they are going for a playoff push.

Saskatoon won their fourth game in a row by beating Brandon 6-5 in overtime at Sasktel Centre Monday afternoon.

It was very loud with over 10,000 fans on hand, mostly elementary school students for the annual “Team Up For Respect Game.”

The anti-bullying initiative brought students out from the Saskatoon catholic and public systems, the Saskatoon Tribal Council and Prairie Spirit School Division.

“I thought it was a great hockey game. The atmosphere was unbelievable,” said coach Bobby Woods.

“We did a lot of good things. We stayed in it 60 minutes. We didn’t let anything effect us and we just kept being resilient and we got what we wanted at the end of the day.”

The Blades played from behind most of the game. Saskatoon gave up an early 2-0 lead, and a 4-2 second period lead, but with the score 5-4 Brandon in the third period, Ryan Graham tied the game with 1:29 to go to force overtime.

“Last time we did this game, I got the tying goal late to send it to overtime too so they’re exciting goals, a lot of fun,” Graham said.

 Nick Zajac sent the crowd in to a frenzy with the game winner one minute into overtime.  
 
The Blades have now won four straight games, and are seven points back of Edmonton with 12 games to go in the regular season.

The Regina Pats visit the Blades at 7:05 p.m. Saturday night at Sasktel Centre.

With Files from Wray Morrison and the Saskatoon Blades