Despite a valiant comeback in the second period, the Oil Caps wound up falling 4-3 to the Swan Valley Stampeders in overtime on Tuesday night at Tundra Oil and Gas Place.
Quintin Sudom scored the game winner at the 3:52 mark of overtime as the Stampeders improved to 26-8-3-2 on the year, while the Oil Caps dropped to 20-14-3-4 on the season.
“Obviously we’re disappointed to not get two points, but we outshot those guys – they’re sitting in second place in the league – so we felt like we controlled lots of different parts of the game,” said Oil Caps assistant coach Tyson Ramsey. “There’s some little things that we have to clean up just to prevent a team like that from getting the quality opportunities … and against a team like that, they’ll hurt you. But it’s encouraging considering we lost the last two (games). It was a really good effort by our guys and really happy with getting a point out of it.”
The Stampeders got on the board first as Leyson Coleman netted his eighth of the season at 9:31 of the opening period to give Swan Valley a 1-0 lead before Brock Shwaluk’s first of the year at 18:55 knotted the score at one piece.
The Stampeders would re-claim the lead in the middle frame as Bradly Goethals scored his 24thof the year on the power play at 13:13 to make it 2-1 before Matthew Osadick’s 18thtally of the campaign just 22 seconds later made it 3-1 for the road team.
The Oil Caps responded quickly however as Brayden Pawluk picked up his fourth marker of the year just nine seconds later to make it 3-2. Later in the period, it was Kolten Kanaski who buried his team-leading 22ndof the year with the man advantage at the 16:50 mark to tie the score.
The third period saw the Oil Caps pour it on in the offensive zone as Virden ended up with 14 shots on net but couldn’t solve Stamps netminder Merek Pipes, who made 43 saves overall to pick up his 10thwin of the year. Oil Caps goaltender Dalton Dosch took the loss in net, turning aside 28 Swan Valley shots.
Next up for the Oil Caps:OCN comes to town to battle the Oil Caps at TOGP on Friday night. Game time: 7:30 p.m.