By Lethbridge Herald on March 18, 2022.
By Justin Seward
Lethbridge Herald
The Lethbridge Hurricanes won their 25th game of the season as they knocked off the Red Deer Rebels 5-2 at the Enmax Centre Friday night.
“Yeah, I thought we played hard,” said Brent Kisio, Hurricanes head coach.
“We did lots of good things — obviously getting the lead that we did was a great result— but I think it was just from our hardwork. We had shots around the net — our defence had some great shots and they found the back of it .”
The Hurricanes saw three different defenceman chip in offensively in the first period to get the home team out to a 3-0 lead after the first.
Canes rookie defenceman Easton Kovacs scored his first Western Hockey League goal at 6:10 of the first to give Lethbridge a 1-0 lead.
“It was awesome,” said Kovacs.
“I haven’t scored in a while, since midget, so it’s a great feeling and good to get the first one in.”
Defenceman Chase Pauls rifled a shot from the point for his third of the season at 8:23 to give the Hurricanes a 2-0 lead.
The Hurricanes would make it 3-0 at 13:46 of the first after Logan McCutcheon scored his third of the season, with the assist going to Justin Hall.
“It’s important,” said Kisio.
“You need some offence from the back end and I think part of that is we had good traffic and our guys were working hard on the forecheck and getting the puck back to our defence. And our defence were putting pucks on net.”
Red Deer would cut into the Hurricanes lead as Ben King would notch his 47th of the year at 12:29 of the second to make it 3-1.
Pauls and Yegor Klavdiev scored empty netters late in the third to secure the win.
The Rebels would add one more off the stick of Jayden Grubbe at 19:08.
The win improves the Hurricanes record to 25-28-3-1 and stay put in seventh place.
The Rebels fall to 39-17-2-1.
The Canes went for 0-for-3 on the powerplay and the Rebels went 0-for-2.
Final shots were 22-16 for Lethbridge
Both clubs will do battle again tonight in Red Deer at 7 p.m.
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