By Thomas Miller
The Lloydminster Border Kings blew a four-goal, third-period lead against the Fort Saskatchewan Chiefs on Sunday night at the Centennial Civic Centre, but Steve Da Silva saved the day, giving the Border Kings a 5-4 win.
The Border Kings built their lead in two spurts.
Brody Foster and Giffen Nyren scored 48 seconds apart to open the scoring midway through the first period.
Da Silva scored his first goal of the night to make it 3-0 and Dallas Fallscheer followed that up 33 seconds later to seemingly put the game out of reach near the end of the second period.
But then the Border Kings’ penalty kill faltered.
“For the most part we did a good job of killing penalties,” said head coach Kent Staniforth after the game. “They just really simplified their power play, just threw a couple pucks on net and they happened to get a stick on it.”
The Chiefs started their rally with 10:39 left in the third period, scoring back-to-back power play goals.
“The first two goals they scored were just nice, net-front tips, not a situation of us doing anything poorly, just two nice goals they scored and unfortunately we kind of hit the panic button when they did,” explained Staniforth. “We really had no need to. We had a lot of momentum going at that time, they just scored a couple of goals and we kind of struggled to find a way to regroup from that and it nearly cost us.”
The Chiefs scored again with 6:06 remaining and tied the game with just over two minutes left.
Staniforth called a time out to regroup.
“I just told them, ‘we’ve got two minutes, this game is not over, let’s relax. Just make a decision to compete, let’s put some pucks on net real early,’” he said. “There’s some really offensively talented guys that in that situation, when I say that you can actually believe it. And I think they did. That’s what they do. They just put pucks on net and natural goal scorers just find a way to have goals go in.”
Luckily, the Chiefs took a penalty and Da Silva went to work.
“Just kind of came off the half-wall, didn’t really have many options and a guy kind of had a stick on me and I just threw it at the net and it luckily made its way in the net,” he said of the game-winning goal. “We have a lot of character guys in our room. We knew it was a tie game still, we knew we hadn’t lost it yet. We still had a minute and a half to get it back and we just put our minds together and got it done.
“It’s a big win for our team. Up four goals in the third, and giving up four then being able to get that one back is big.”
Sitting atop the Chinook Hockey League with 26 points in 17 games, the Border Kings head out on the road for their next three games, facing Stony Plain on Wednesday and then Innisfail twice on the weekend.
“Obviously January is going to be a tough month,” said Staniforth. “The top four or five teams in this league are so tight right now that you lose one game and you drop two (places) in the standings. Stony’s always a good team, a strong team with good goaltending. We need to take our ‘A’ game there to have a chance to win.
“Innisfail, we want to go down there and compete and take two games from them as well. Some teams head down there expecting to show up and win. We’re at the point of our season that we’re really working on our mindset and starting to prepare for bigger and better things so we’re taking all three of those games real seriously.”
After the road trip only four games remain in the regular season, all of which will be played at the Centennial Civic Centre in Lloydminster.