Over the last while, the Rockets have improved greatly, playing hard each and every contest. For the third time in the last four games, the club has taken their opposition to overtime, twice with Fernie and once with Creston. This marked cohesiveness in their game will bring dividends in the post-season.
Friday, February 11th, 2022 Rockets 2 Fernie 1
And, for the third time in the last four games, three periods couldn’t decide a winner.
The Rockets and the Ghostriders have played each other tough over the course of the entire season, and this game proved no different. The checking was close and the action physical.
Before a crowd of 500 Ghostrider faithful, there was no scoring in the opening twenty minutes, as the teams split four penalties called by referee Adam Archibald. This game would later prove to become a goaltenders battle between Rocket’s Levi Hall and Fernie’s Dylan Lacroix.
Golden moved into a 1-0 lead at 12:24 of the middle frame on Andrew Teare’s 4th tally of the year, with helpers going to Gavin Kennedy and Kade Cochlan.
That score held until 6:33 of the final period, when Fernie’s Ethan MacDuff hit for his 17th goal of the year, on the powerplay, to deadlock things at 1-1.
The 5-minute OT session solved nothing, and the contest went into the player shootout.
The shootout proved to be a near carbon-copy of the Golden-Fernie shootout at the Plywood Palace just 7 days prior, as Levi Hall shutdown all three Ghostrider snipers, while the eventual winner came off the stick of sturdy forward Gavin Kennedy.
Shots were plentiful, but fairly even, as Fernie outshot Golden 40-36.
Saturday, February 12th, 2022 Fernie 8 Rockets 3
As much as the previous night’s contest was close-checking, this game in Golden was wide-open right from the opening face-off. Fernie dominated in the first period, starting off with a breakaway just thirty seconds into the game, which was neatly stopped by Rocket’s netminder Colton Day.
But the visitors kept the pressure on, scoring in bunches. Three goals in one minute and ten seconds (from Nick Mitchell, Cole Fisher and Matthew Schulmeister,) and another two markers later in the period (Kort Kisinger and Liam Samycia) in the same amount of time, moved Fernie into a comfortable 5-0 lead. Rockets replied with a Liam Furlong powerplay goal at 17:22 to get on the scoreboard.
After Fernie extended the lead to 6-1 five minutes into the middle stanza, Golden settled down a little and began to attack offensively. A pair of Rocket goals off the sticks of Zac Siudy and Connor Funke closed the margin to 6-3 after forty minutes.
But in the final frame, the Ghostriders added another brace of goals (one shorthanded) from Liam Samycia and Reese MacLean to record to 8-3 win.
This was the final regular season home game for the Rockets, as they close out the schedule next Saturday against the Columbia Valley Rockies in Invermere.
The post-season play begins the week of February 22nd.
