There were some wild swings in their game Friday night, but the Power Dodge Estevan Bruins came out on the right end of a 6-4 game with the Battlefords North Stars Friday night at Affinity Place.
The Bruins came out with the first three goals by Will Koop, Bryce Platt and T.J. Irey and forced the Stars into calling a timeout 5:05 into the first period.
Koop opened the scoring at 2:04 of the first for his second as a Bruin.
“(Davis) made a nice pass across the ice to Ripper (Turner Ripplinger) and Ripper just kicked it wide out to the net and took a D with him, and I just had a nice lane to walk in,” said Koop. “I saw some net in the top corner and I just walked it in.”
While they enjoyed the momentum for a while, they weren’t able to score again for a while. The Stars took advantage of that and scored two before the end of the second period, including one with three seconds left in the second period, and took a 4-3 lead at 3:08 of the third when Logan Spence’s shot trickled through Grant Boldt.
Koop came again to the rescue with the tying goal at 8:48 of the third period.
“They got a late period goal and they got one at the start but I think we just knew if we got back to our game and how we were playing in the first, we knew we could win that period,” said Koop. “I think it was just mental toughness that got us through that third and got us to keep going.”
Tanner Manz’s go-ahead goal a couple of minutes later ended up being the winning goal, and Koop helped out the cause once again with an assist on Michael McChesney’s empty net goal.
Grant Boldt stopped 25 of 29 shots in the game for the victory, while the Bruins fired 30 shots at Joel Grzybowski.
The Bruins’ next action in their weekend against teams they beat in the playoffs last year is Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. against the Kindersley Klippers at Affinity Place.
