The Estevan Apex midget AA Bruins took their time and scored some early, timely goals in their first Saskatchewan Midget AA Hockey League regular season win this season.
After starting the year 0-2 the Bruins won 7-1 at home over the Weyburn Red Wings for their first win of the season.
“I thought we played well right from the start of the game here (Saturday) night,” said Bruins head coach Riley Hengen. “We kind of got off to a sluggish start in the first two games.”
Hengen said the team worked on “a lot of everything” in their week of practice before this game.
“We put a big focus on special teams,” he said. “So you’ve got to preach discipline but at the same time work on those special teams and I think it showed here (Saturday) night.”
Tayce Miller, Kieran Stewart and Chase Gedak each scored in the first period and Dalton Schrader scored in the second to give the Bruins a commanding 4-0 lead. Joey Meredith, Kade Bendtsen and Gedak with his second of the game tallied for the Bruins before Mitchell McDonald broke the shutout with 8:03 on the clock in the third.
Meredith also had three assists in the game.
The Bruins suffered what looked like a fairly serious goaltending injury when Morgan Wanner went down after being landed on. Backup netminder for the night Zane Winter was called into action and stopped all but one shot he faced.
“You don’t like to see a guy go down like that,” said Hengen. “We just wanted to make sure everybody was still up on the bench and ready to go. Zane stepped in and did a really good job. We’ve got two solid goalies so hopefully Morgan’s back soon. But for the time being we’ve got Zane here who did a good job filling in.”
Hengen feels that repetition at practice, now that they’ve had some time for that, will be important in order to keep the good times rolling.
“We have a lot of potential in the dressing room,” he said. “Now that we’ve been going for a little over a week here, you can see guys are starting to gel together and starting to play better as different lines come together here.”
The Bruins’ next action is Wednesday in Weyburn, and their next home game is Oct. 13 at 1:15 p.m. against the Moose Jaw Warriors and then the following afternoon at 2:30 p.m. against the Regina Capitals.
