Late game letdown

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All kidding aside, playing a full 60 minutes should be the battle cry for the Kelowna Rockets this season.

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For the second time in a month, a late back-breaking goal on home ice saw a point or two taken away when it appeared overtime was looming large.

The Rockets lost in a similar fashion back in late October when the Winnipeg Ice scored the game-winning goal with 23 seconds left on the clock in a 5-4 setback.

In the teams third game in four nights, an over-aggressive hit by forward Max Graham in a 3-3 game put the Moose Jaw Warriors on the power play, which they promptly converted on, in a 4-3 win Saturday night at Prospera Place.

Rockets Assistant Coach Josh McNevin, on the 104-7 – The Lizard – post-game show, didn’t like the call, nor the result.

“I thought it was a very, very soft call. He didn’t take any strides into the hit. He possibly left his feet after contact.”

The hit, which was penalized as a charging minor, put the Warriors on the man advantage and the five-man unit, which already roasted the Rockets penalty-killing unit for two goals, put on a clinic in puck movement with Warriors forward Jagger Firkus scoring his second goal of the game, handing the Rockets their 10th loss of the season.

The ill-advised infraction came after the Rockets mounted a solid third-period comeback with two goals off the blade of leading point producer Andrew Cristall before Colton Dach tied the score with his seventh goal of the season just four minutes later.

It was amazing how good the home team looked, after flat lining in a second period, where they were out-scored 2-0 and out-shot 13-6.

“The two-goal lead is the worst lead in hockey”. McNevin continued. “We got one and that gave us some momentum and then hopefully you can jump on them and get another and that’s exactly what we did”.

Dach had a chance to give the Rockets the lead late in the game, when a wrist shot from d-man John Babcock from the left point, hit a body, and the puck ricocheted to him at the right face-off circle. The 19-year-old, who has pin-point accuracy from that spot on the ice, attempted to one-time it into a wide-open net, yet the puck was sent wide of the far post, much to the dismay of the on-lookers who were about to stand up from their seats in celebration.

“We didn’t deserve [the win] it”, McNevin said bluntly despite the late-third-period rally.

With five home-ice losses (the team lost only 6 times on home ice all of last season), the task doesn’t get much easier when Connor Bedard and the Regina Pats come to town Tuesday night.

“It is always nice to play in front of a sold-out barn”, McNevin admitted. “Too bad it doesn’t happen more often. It should be fun to see a player of that caliber.”