The Prince Albert Raiders clawed back from a three goal deficit, but couldn’t hang on for the win against the Kelowna Rockets on Thanksgiving Day.
The Raiders found themselves down 4-1 in the second period before scoring four straight goals to take a 5-4 lead. The last 13 minutes of the game belonged to the Rockets, however, as they scored three times to skate away with a 7-5 win.
“I told the team tonight after the game that we did a lot of good things when it came to managing the puck and generating offence,” Raiders coach Jeff Truitt said afterwards. “Usually when you score five you’ve got enough, but giving up seven, we’ve just got to be able to lock it down and be heavy in our own zone just so teams don’t get opportunities or goals against us. We’ve got to be able to take this thing to a new defensive level.”
Niall Crocker, Krzysztof Macias, Tomas Mrsic, Harrison Lodewyk, and Brayden Dube all scored for the Raiders, who have now lost six in a row.
Truitt said he was impressed with how the squad battled back after falling behind early, but needed to play better with the lead.
“We just need to be able to lock things down when we’re up,” he said. “We battled so hard to get back into it, we just can’t allow those types of plays, though no player wants to. We’ve got to find a way to get on the winning side of things here.
“We believe in this group,” Truitt added. “We know that there have been new faces in here. We know we’ve got a little bit of a process with the chemistry, although it’s not bad. We think that we can up that level, but it is a process.”
Andrew Cristall opened the scoring on the powerplay. He took a cross ice pass and fired a wrist shot over a sprawling Max Hildebrand to make it 1-0.
The Rockets added to their lead with goals from Ethan Neutens and Kanjyu Gojsic in the second before Prince Albert got on the board. Crocker got the goal after deflecting a Daxon Rudolph shot from the sideboards past Rockets netminder Jake Pilon to make it 3-1.
Max Graham made it 4-1 Kelowna before the Raiders tallied four straight times to take the lead.
Macias began the rally by pouncing on a loose puck and firing it over Pilon’s pad for his first goal since rejoining the Raiders. Mrsic made it 4-3 when he wired a wrist shot past Pilon on the powerplay, and Lodewyk made it 4-4 on a wrist-shot from the sideboards that seemed to fool Pilon and find its way into the top corner.
Dube made it 5-4 when he converted a cross-ice feed from Lodewyk on a two-on-one with roughly 13 minutes to play in the third period. However, the Rockets stormed back with a goal from Michael Cicek less than a minute later to make it 5-5.
Carter Kowalyk added the winner with less than six minutes to play and Brett Calhoon added an insurance marker with less than four minutes to play to secure the win.
The Raiders continue their B.C. roadtrip on Tuesday when they stop in Kamloops to play the Blazers. Puck drop is 8 p.m. CST.
