Two revelations Friday night.
Number one.
The Kelowna Rockets can play with the Seattle Thunderbirds, despite the two teams being separated by 53 points in the standings during the regular season.
Number two.
T-Birds goaltender Thomas Milic, who owned the best goals-against average in the WHL during the regular season, has a superb glove hand.
In a 3-2 loss to the Seattle Thunderbirds at accesso ShoWare Centre, the eighth-seeded Rockets gave the top-seeded T-Birds all they could handle.
“We took it to them for two and half periods”, assistant coach Josh MacNevin told RocketFAN after the game. “We played well. The guys were buying in and doing the little things really well. That’s a good team. It is a belief thing. Now we know we can play with them”.
Rockets d-man Jackson DeSouza, who does his best work blocking shots and anchoring the penalty-killing unit, opened the scoring on a long-range wrist shot, and the Rockets enjoyed a 1-0 lead after the opening period.
D-man Caden Price, who scored only five goals during the regular season, found the back of the net with his first career playoff goal on the power play, and the hometown team was stunned, trailing 2-0.
The T-Birds made it a one-goal game when forward Dylan Guenther, who started the season in the NHL with the Arizona Coyotes, scored with 28 seconds left in the second frame.
Guenther ended the night with a game-high 10 shots on net.
“They had us hemmed in for a bit. That was a tough one to give up”, MacNevin admitted about the late second-period goal. “It is a tough goal to give up because you want to lock it down in the last two minutes for sure. Up until that point, we had them.”
Seattle would score back-to-back goals 2:31 seconds apart in the third period in the come-from-behind win, thanks to goaltender Thomas Milic making a massive glove-hand save against Rockets forward Adam Kydd on a power play.
“We gave it everything we had”, MacNevin added. We had good goaltending. The guys just worked and didn’t back down and stuck to the game plan. We had some real good looks on the power play late.”
Milic was dialed in when it mattered most, especially early in the third period with his team trailing 2-1.
The 19-year-old, who won a gold medal for Canada at the world juniors, made two quick in-tight stops on 31-goal man Carson Golder before Guenther scored his second goal of the game to tie the score, before teammate Reid Schaefer was awarded a power play goal, which the Rockets believed was offside.
The video in the building showed no conclusive evidence, so after a lengthy review, the goal was deemed good.
It marked only the 8th time this season the T-Birds trailed on home ice heading into the third period, yet on this night they found a way to squeak out a one-goal win.
The Rockets ended the night, going 1 for 3 on the power play, but more importantly, allowed the T-Birds just three chances with the extra man.
“That’s how they get into the game and get other teams out of the game”, MacNevin commented after being asked if the T-Birds were goating his team into taking penalties. “We can do a better job of just playing between the whistles. Let them do what they are going to do. We have nothing to prove. They were trying to get us into retaliating, and sometimes we didn’t react the way we want to, but for the most part we did.”
The result was a far cry from the lopsided tilt between the two teams in game one of an opening-round playoff series a year ago, where Seattle cruised to a 6-0 win.
“Just from a confidence thing from a playing standpoint is big for the fellas”, MacNevin said about the tightly contested game.
“I am really proud of the group.”
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