A stagnant power play came alive for the Saskatoon Blades on Tuesday night, powering a Game 3 victory in comeback fashion over the visiting Edmonton Oil Kings.<\/p>\n
Seated at the same podium where he addressed questions about the team\u2019s 1-for-11 power play a day earlier, Blades forward Rowan Calvert reflected on a breakthrough night on special teams for his group.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow about that power play, you know?\u201d Calvert said.<\/p>\n
Read more:<\/p>\n
The Blades weathered a back-and-forth affair at SaskTel Centre, rallying from a 3-1 deficit late in the second period to score three unanswered to take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven opening round series with a 4-3 victory.<\/p>\n
According to Blades head coach Dan DaSilva, it was a continuation of Saskatoon\u2019s previous two games of the series and a push to respond which impressed him the most.<\/p>\n
\u201cI loved our effort in that third period,\u201d DaSilva said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe weren\u2019t going to be denied and we just kept believing. The energy on the bench was great, the guys were talking and into it. We just got contributions from everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coming off a 4-3 overtime loss in Game 2 of the series on Sunday in Edmonton, Saskatoon drew three penalties in the first period and were unable to convert on their first two with several missed chances at open nets.<\/p>\n
That was until Blades forward David Lewandowski fired home his second goal of the post-season to break Saskatoon\u2019s drought on the man advantage with 6:44 left in the opening frame.<\/p>\n
A period which Saskatoon managed to out-shoot the Oil Kings 14-5 and control possession.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had some good looks in the first couple power plays,\u201d DaSilva said. \u201cIt was like, \u2018Oh no, here we go again.\u2019 The guys again just sticking with it, that\u2019s the messaging. Just stick with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tide quickly turned out of the first intermission however, with Edmonton scoring just 55 seconds into the second period from defenceman Noa Ta\u2019amu.<\/p>\n
Less than six minutes later, both Ryan Gower and Miroslav Holinka found the back of the net for the Oil Kings to extend their lead to 3-1 and silencing SaskTel Centre in the process.<\/p>\n
Out-shot by a 17-5 margin in the second period, Saskatoon struggled to gain momentum until a rush chance with 2:10 left before the buzzer.<\/p>\n
Receiving a pass from Hunter Laing, who was cleared to play after leaving with an injury in Game 2, Calvert sniped the puck bar-down on Oil Kings goaltender Ethan Simcoe to drag Saskatoon back to within a single goal after the middle frame.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a little quiet on our bench,\u201d Calvert said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were kind of feeling it, fatigue starts to set in here as these games go on and there\u2019s not a lot of time in between. We just believed, I mean it\u2019s big to get the goal there late in the second.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to DaSilva, that goal helped spark the Blades in the intermission with some added confidence which translated to the final 20 minutes of play.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt came from the players honestly,\u201d DaSilva said. \u201cOur leaders, tremendous leaders in that room. I went in there and (said), \u2018What\u2019s important next?\u2019 They said, \u2018We\u2019re just going to push back.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Nearing the midway mark of the third period still trailing 3-2, Blades captain Tyler Parr crashed the net off a Jack Kachkowski point shot and cleaned up the rebound for the game-tying goal.<\/p>\n
Four minutes after Parr\u2019s equalizer, Saskatoon was sent to their fourth power play of the night off a Ta\u2019amu high sticking call which they made the most of.<\/p>\n
Picking the puck up at the point, Blades defenceman Tristen Doyle let a wrist shot fly which carried its way through traffic to mark his first goal scored since Feb. 21.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest I blacked out a little bit,\u201d Doyle said. \u201cIt felt pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Blades survived a late Oil Kings push with the goaltender pulled for the extra attacker to secure the win and re-take the lead in the first round series.<\/p>\n
For Edmonton, it was a tough night to find consistency with several key players out of the lineup including playoff starting goaltender Parker Snell, star defenceman Blake Fiddler and centreman Aaron Obobaifo.<\/p>\n
Oil Kings head coach Jason Smith said the team didn\u2019t come out the way they wanted to in the third period.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were on our heels a little bit and kind of sat back,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t execute well with the puck and created some turnovers, which created momentum for them. They came out hard and physical, and we didn\u2019t really counter it and react to it properly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s win means Saskatoon will have a shot at going up 3-1 in the series with a victory in Game 4 on Wednesday, a task Calvert believes his team is up for.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got some dogs in that room,\u201d Calvert said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see it, we\u2019re physical, we\u2019re hard. We want to be that team, we want to make it hard on teams every night. It\u2019s just clicking right now and it doesn\u2019t surprise me, honestly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Game 4 of the series goes Wednesday night at SaskTel Centre with a 7 p.m. puck drop.<\/p>\n
Read more:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A stagnant power play came alive for the Saskatoon Blades on Tuesday night, powering a Game 3 victory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":{"0":"post-574639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-edmonton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}