Broncos 2, Blazers 1

From The Daily News of Saturday, Oct. 6, 2007 . . .

If Sasha Golin is going to serve as the Kamloops Blazers’ alarm clock every
game, his knuckles are going to be awfully sore by season’s end.
Trailing the Swift Current Broncos 2-1 as the third period started Friday
night at Interior Savings Centre, the Golin alarm went off for the second
time in three WHL games.
Where it worked two games ago — a Golin fight with the since-released Brad
Bakken provided the Blazers with the spark necessary to overcome a 2-0
deficit and go on to a 3-2 overtime victory over the visiting Seattle
Thunderbirds — a book of matches and some kerosene wouldn’t have lit a fire
under the home boys on this night.
But, yes, Golin tried.
As the 19-year-old right winger said later: “It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll
do whatever it takes to get the boys going.”
As the teams lined up for the faceoff to start the third period, it was
evident that Golin was trying to light the match. He ended up scrapping with
Broncos defenceman R.J. Larochelle, while Kamloops centre Mark Hall went
with left-winger Geordie Wudrick.
On this night, however, the Blazers didn’t react the way they had against
Seattle and the result was their second loss in four home games.
The Broncos had lost 7-2 to the Hitmen in Calgary on Wednesday but were able
to put that behind them as they won for the fourth time in six games.
“That was a real disappointing effort for us,” offered Broncos right-winger
Dale Weise, who scored both his club’s goal last night. “It was a real poor
performance for 60 minutes. We knew Kamloops was a good team. We just wanted
to come out and take it to them in the first period and then play a complete
game. I think we did that.”
Well . . . it didn’t quite work out like that in a first period from which
the Broncos were able to escape with a 1-1 draw.
The Broncos came out with some jump, outshot the Blazers 3-1 and took a 1-0
lead when the 19-year-old Weise, an 18-goal man last season, went in alone
to beat goaltender Justin Leclerc, who was sharp in stopping 18 shots.
By period’s end the Blazers held an 11-3 edge in shots and had the
equalizer, courtesy right-winger Kenton Dulle, who drove to the net and
shovelled a centring pass from defenceman Jordan Rowley past goaltender
Travis Yonkman, who would make 22 saves.
Weise’s second goal — on the power play, he took advantage of a fortuitous
bounce off the end boards to beat Leclerc at 14:01 of the second period —
stood up as the winner.
The Blazers didn’t do much of anything after that, other than to allow
themselves to get distracted by some erratic officiating, and, in fact, they
mustered only four shots on Yonkman in the third period, the last one a
harmless 150-footer at the buzzer.
With one minute left, the Blazers got Leclerc out for the extra attacker and
had the play in the Broncos’ zone, but Weise blocked a Brock Nixon point
shot and that was that.
“I was standing there and I knew he was going to one-time it,” said Weise,
an icepack on his bruised right knee. “I just went, ‘Oh . . .’ ”
Weise admitted, however, that it would have hurt a lot more had the Broncos
lost. The Blazers, meanwhile, have only their wounded pride.
“We’re just, I guess, too confident,” Golin said. “We know we have a good
team. But we have to work hard because on any given night the team that
works the hardest wins.
“We have to put together a full 60 minutes. Right now there are flashes of
it. We get confident and get going and then we . . . we’ve got to be more
disciplined. We get going and there’s a bad call or an undisicplined penalty
and it’s right back to the start.”
The Blazers were done in, too, by a power play that was 0-for-8 and now is
at 13.8 per cent.
“We had a couple of good power plays but we’re not doing a very determined
job of protecting the puck at times and we’re passing it to guys who don’t
have any support,” Dean Clark, the Blazers’ general manager and head coach,
said. “We didn’t get our game going and now guys are getting frustrated . .
. we took 10-minute misconducts.
“I think the refereeing . . . we weren’t sure what was going to be called
and that threw us off our game. We have to understand that we can’t control
what the refs do; we have to go out there and play.”
They get another chance tonight when they meet the first-place Bruins in
Chilliwack. The Bruins, who ruined the Blazers home-opener with a 2-1
victory on Sept. 21, beat the host Vancouver Giants 5-4 in overtime last
night.
That victory lifted the Bruins (5-1-0-0) into a tie atop the B.C. Division with the Giants (4-0-1-1). Yes, the expansion Bruins of 2006-07 are the first-place Bruins of 2007-08.
They will be a formidable challenge for the Blazers. But then, when you are
playing the way the Blazers are, any team poses a challenge.
JUST NOTES: Referees Sean Raphael and Colby Smith somehow managed to hand
out 164 penalty minutes, with 86 of those going to the Blazers. They dished
out 13 minor penalties through the first two periods of a game that, to that
point, wasn’t the least bit physical. . . . Amazingly, though, each team
finished with eight power-play opportunities. . . . Attendance was announced
as 4,538.