The West Kelowna Warriors gave four second period goals and three power play goals on the night in a 5-1 loss to the Penticton Vees in their final regular season game at Royal LePage Place on Tuesday night.
The Warriors played the first period tight with the Vees and opened the scoring 13:15 into the opening frame as Quin Foreman rushed down the right wing and buried his own rebound off the left pad of Vees netminder Mat Robson for his 25th goal of the season and a 1-0 Warriors lead.
West Kelowna applied most of their pressure on the night in the first period as they fired 13 shots on the Vees net where Mat Robson made 12 of 13 saves in the opening 20 minutes of play while Warriors netminder Gabriel Morency stopped all seven first period shots he faced.
The Vees took over the game in the 2nd period of play as Jamie Armstrong started the four-goal frame with a power play goal at the 2:18 as Jamie Armstrong banged in a rebound from the top of the crease that bled through Warriors goaltender Gabriel Morency and squeaked across the line for the 1-1 tie on the power play.
Penticton came back and took their first lead of the game at the 6:31 mark of the period as Grant Cruikshank cut across the blue line and put a shot under the glove and over the pad of Morency for the Vees 6th shorthanded goal of the season against the Warriors and to put the Vees ahead by a 2-1 score.
The Vees kept the goals coming as they struck with their only even strength marker of the period at the 14:17 mark as the Warriors failed to clear the puck from their own zone and a pass from the corner found Ty Amonte all alone in front as he outwaited a sprawled Morency to put the Vees ahead 3-1.
Another power play goal closed out the period as with just 8.8 seconds left in the 2nd period, Nic Jones scored his 10th goal against the Warriors this season and he found an open net on a 5-on-3 power play off a rebound to put the Vees ahead by a 4-1 margin at the end of two periods.
The Vees put 13 shots on the Warriors goal in the middle stanza with Morency making nine saves on those 13 shots while Mat Robson wasn’t tested much, making 8 saves on 8 shots in frame of the work in the Penticton net.
The third period saw one goal and it came courtesy of the Vees and yet again, on the power play as Chris Klack beat Morency with a glove side shot from the left face-off circle for the 5-1 lead and that’s how the game would end as the Vees picked up their 40th victory of the season.
Gabriel Morency turned aside 28 of 33 shots in the loss, his 3rd of the season while Mat Robson continued his dominance versus the Warriors with 29 saves on 30 shots for his 33rd win of the season and his 7th against the Warriors this season.
FINAL SCORE: 5-1 Vees
SHOTS ON GOAL: 33-30 Vees
PP: Warriors (0/4) Vees (3/5)
3 STARS:
1) Grant Cruikshank (1-1-2)
2) Ty Amonte (1-1-2)
3) Gabe Bast (0-2-2)
ATTENDANCE: 1186
The Warriors (27-27-0-2) conclude their regular season schedule this weekend with a pair of road games first starting in the Nicola Valley on Friday night as they take on the Merritt Centennials (21-25-2-8) for a 7 PM puck drop. Catch the game on the Warriors Internet Network and www.hockeytv.com with the pre-game show beginning at 6:50 PM.
