Blades suffer shootout loss in first home game since November

The Saskatoon Blades opened up their five game home stand Saturday night with a 4-3 shootout loss in a hard fought tilt with the Memorial Cup host Kelowna Rockets.

After winning just two of seven games on their nearly month long road trip, the team believes they have been playing the right way recently.

“I really liked our teams effort tonight. I thought we played a hard game — I thought we deserved to win,” said Blades head coach Mitch Love.

“I’ve liked our team’s effort the last four games. We are playing a better team game (and) we are playing harder for each other.”

Special teams proved to be one of the stories of the game for the Blades in Saturday night’s tilt.

Despite not scoring with the man advantage, heavy offensive zone time and pressure on power plays gave them momentum after slow starts in both the first and the second period.

“Our power play wasn’t very good on the U.S. trip so we made a couple switches this week. We always say the number one goal is to score on the power play and number two is to just create momentum if we don’t score,” said 19-year-old forward Zach Huber.

“I thought our power play was really good tonight. Even though we didn’t score, we had momentum, had some chances. It gets guys into the game, gets the crowd into it so I thought that helped us.”

The Rockets’ Michael Farren opened the scoring at the 1:12 mark of the second. About six minutes later, Huber tied the game two seconds after the Blades’ second power play of the game ended.

The Blades took a 3-2 lead into the third after goals from Tristen Robins and rookie Colton Dach, the younger brother of former Blade and current Chicago Blackhawks rookie Kirby Dach.

Despite the momentum gained by the Blades’ power play throughout the game, it was, ironically, a missed chance at another man advantage that led to the Rockets tying goal.

In the third period, Rockets captain Nolan Foote’s attempted shot saw his errant stick catch Saskatoon defenseman Scott Walford up high, taking him down and drawing blood.

No penalty was called and the Rockets maintained possession, so play resumed with Walford down and bloodied in the slot. The extra space eventually led to the Rockets tying the game.

“It’s tough because I know there are rules saying that if you touch the puck when one of your players is injured laying in the defensive zone then they can blow it dead. That’s the rule,” said Love.

“So it’s unfortunate, but that play has not really been my issue tonight. I thought there was a lot of missed calls — a lot of things that they got away with that I didn’t think they necessarily needed to. Both teams played a hard game; they were physical, they were engaging — but the officials wanted to make it more about them than the teams.”

In the shootout, the Rockets’ Ethan Ernst scored on Kelowna’s first attempt which ended up being the game winner after all three of the Blades’ shooters failed to convert.

The Blades are now shifting their focus to prepare for their  Tuesday night matchup with the smaller, quicker Medicine Hat Tigers team.

“The opponents are totally different. (Kelowna) plays a little bit of a heavier game, a little bit more grinding in both ends of the ice,” said Love, who will be away from the team for the next few weeks to coach the Canadian World Junior team.

“Medicine Hat is going to come at you with speed — they’re going to quicken their transition, so we are going to have to be in the right spots. We’re going to have to manage our pucks and not give them opportunities. It’s kind of a different game.”

Puck drop against the Tigers is 7 p.m. on Wednesday at Sasktel Centre.