The Oil Caps picked up a big road win on Wednesday night, defeating the first place Terriers by a score of 5-3 in Portage.
Despite falling behind early, the Oil Caps found a way to climb back into this one as the club won its fourth straight. After the Terriers opened up a 2-0 lead on consecutive tallies from the stick of Orca Wiesblatt at 8:00 and 13:36 respectively, Tanner Andrew’s snipe at 15:32 followed by Blake Sidoni’s goal on the power play at 19:43 tied the game 2-2 after 20 minutes of play.
The Oil Caps kept coming as Dylan Halliday’s marker with the man advantage less than two minutes into the middle frame (1:51) made it 3-2 for Virden. Hunter Cloutier would later provide the Oil Caps with a two-goal cushion as his goal at 15:38 made it 4-2 for the Oil Caps after 40 minutes.
The Terriers never went away however as Scott Mickoski’s 13thof the season at the 5:39 mark cut into the Virden lead but that’s as close as the home team would come on this night. Kolten Kanaski would score his 17thof the season into an empty net with less than a minute to go as the Oil Caps improved to 14-11-1-4 on the year.
“It was a real good win for our hockey club,” said Oil Caps assistant coach Tyson Ramsey. “I didn’t think we started really well and that’s something that’s happening too often lately, so we need to rectify that for sure, but we again were able to take the game over in the second period.”
Ramsey describes the third period as a bit of a track meet so to speak in that the Oil Caps bent but didn’t break.
“Our guys competed hard and we were able to fend off a real good offensive group in Portage. A real character win for us.”
“I thought we had a bit of a slow start to the game, but as the game went on, we got stronger and at the end of the day, we wanted it more and got the result we wanted,” said Oil Caps forward Tanner Andrew.
Dalton Dosch picked up his 11thwin of the year between the pipes for Virden, turning aside 24 shots, while Ethan Peterson took the loss in net for Portage, stopping 25 pucks directed his way.
Next up for the Oil Caps:Friday night in Neepawa against the Natives. Game time: 7:30 p.m.