Riders win and lots of drivel

After losing 6-2 to the Rockies in Invermere last Tuesday the Riders bounced back with a 5-4 double overtime win on Friday night in Sparwood.

The Riders and Rockies were tied up at 1-1 at the end of the first period Mitch Titus who finished with 1G 1A  and Devin Burton (PP) scored the goals.

  Five minutes into the second  Chase Hawkins and Ryan Skytt had the Rockies up 3-1.

At 13:10 Brant Mack (former Nitro) scored his first as a Ghostrider on a breakaway then Jordan Kromm tied the game at three.  After that Dylan Defosse scored a PP goal that gave the Riders a 4-3 lead going into the third.

In the third Mike Dyck scored the tying goal with .01 seconds left on the clock on the PP. 

The game went to OT and in the second OT  Keelan Saworski scored a beauty on a pass from from Jason Lane giving the Riders the two points.

Notes

The Player of the Game was Keelan Saworski with the game winner and two assists... but I’ll make the argument that Zak Larson could have been the POG. The Riders took 2 four minute penalties in the last half of the third and the Rockies had several grade A chances that Larson stopped thus giving the boys a chance to win.

One of the 4 minutes penalties was to Grayson Neufeld who was about to get called for roughing then took an unnoticed shot from Seth Summers so he slashed him pretty good in the back of the leg and Summers fell like an Elk in hunting season. He was fine, and if I could make things different I’da had 23 slash him in the head after watching all the stuff this guy does... but I wish Dubielewicz would trade him to us this summer...

The tying goal... It was just in the nick of time to me and several of the fans in my area and we were in that end of the ice.

What the fans wanted to see
After an altercation on the ice between a few different players Kyler Shmigelsky was headed (literally) off the ice when he gave Matt Cooper a head butt. Cooper fought him and won convincingly then held his hands up to the cheering crowd. It was heartwarming to this old bas###d bringing back memories of the good old days. 

And Finally

A couple of years ago a team in our league got blasted when the scored keeper put One-Sided ahead of the referee’s name on the scoresheet. The thin skinned referees and KIJHL officials went berserk and the refs were going to refuse to ref the league. It was way over kill IMO. Anyway...

Last week when Kimberley lost 7-1 in Creston Derek Stuart went really berserk and did it in the media, basically accusing the referee ( a senior official ) of cheating in favour of any other team Kimberley plays against. See the comments below stolen from Josh Lockhart’s blog. There was more but this is what is out there and is what I can say.

It will be interesting to see what happens to Stuart... if we ever  do. The players are berated on a list on the KIJHL website every time they get suspended, and they should be, but where are the coaches suspensions ??? The league is run by the governors and they are buddies with the coaches, go figure.


"Mentally a major factor [in Creston] was that we knew we were not going to win with that official. We have a past history with him, and we knew we were not going to win."

A very bold statement by Stuart, but there are stats to back it. Including the conference finals last year the Nitro's have played 43 games, the Nitro's are 0-6 with this official, and 31-7 with all the others.

"He makes it extremely difficult for us to have a chance to win in an even playing field.

"Last night was a perfect example, it was his show. Our players have come to the point where we know that we are not going to get our fair shake with him. That was a very big mental struggle."

The Nitro's loss on Saturday was their seventh of the season, and in four of those losses, it was the same official. Stuart provided more stats, that they have been outscored 19-3 (20% of the Nitro's goals against in four games), and have had nearly 2.5 more penalties called against them in those games.

"We haven't won in six tries with this official. It has become an issue that the league hopefully does something about."