The Penticton Vees took out their brooms and swept the Wenatchee Wild in a two-game mini-series to finish off the regular season in style.
Game one on Friday
Friday night’s game saw the Vees win 4-1. Colton Kalezic picked the pocket of a Wild defensemen and slid the puck home short-handed to give the Vees a lead midway through the first period. Danny Weight added another one with just 16 seconds to give the Vees a two goal lead into the intermission.
Owen Bohn of the Wild scored the only goal in the second, beating Vees goalie Carl Stankowski, who stopped 24 shots on the night. In the final frame, Penticton added its final two goals by Tyler Ho and Darwin Lakoduk.
Kalezic, Weight, and Stankowski were the three stars of the game, but they, and the rest of the Vees couldn’t celebrate for long with a rematch less than 24 hours later.
Game two on Saturday night
The final game of the regular season was one for the ages as the cardiac Vees came back from 3-0 to win 4-3 over the Wild.
Wenatchee came into the game buzzing. The Wild opened the scoring early from Ethan Wolthers and then added another two from Matt Dorsey and Drake Usher. The Wild looked poised and dictated the pace through the first two periods of the game. After the second intermission and all the scoring in the first, the Vees were down 3-0 going into their final period of the regular season.
With 20 minutes left, the Vees knew they had to create something special to win the game and that’s when Jackson Niedermayer opened the scoring for Penticton to cue the comeback. Another goal less than two minutes later from Lukas Sillinger gave Vees fans hope with their team down by just one goal with more than ten minutes left in the game.
However, Sillinger and the Vees waited until the final minute. Penticton lost the faceoff in the offensive zone but retrieved the puck quickly. That’s when Sillinger out waited Wild goalie Noah Altman to send the game to overtime. In the extra frame, Philadelphia Flyers prospect Jay O’Brien scored the game-winner off a feed from Weight on a 2 on 1.
The Vees ended their regular season campaign on a high and should have some swagger going into round one of the playoffs, which kick off on Thursday, February 27th at the South Okanagan Events Centre against the West Kelowna Warriors.
