The Spruce Grove Saints looked to stay in the win column on Sunday afternoon against the Okotoks Oilers. The hometown team would go down early as the Oilers defencemen worked the perimeter before finding Nolan DuPont at the top of the faceoff circle who scored blocker side on Colten Scott.
Penalty trouble would hit the Saints midway through the first period, as they went down 2 men to give Okotoks a lengthy 5-on-3 power play. The Oilers would score with an Ethan Murray blast to make it 2-0.
The Saints would find some life out of the media timeout as Jacob Hamel’s point shot was blocked by the traffic in front, before Owen Leckelt found the rebound and fired it into the back of the net.
With minutes to go in the first, the Saints forced a turnover at the Okotoks blueline as they looked to exit the zone. Adam Perron would find himself all alone from the top of the face-off circle and scored with a beautiful forehand-backhand move to send Oilers’ netminder Jackson Silverberg falling to the ice. That would tie the game at 2-2.
Before the period was out Trey Fredenberg would pick the corner over the shoulder of Scott to make it a 3-2 Oilers lead.
In the second both teams would get power play chances, but neither team would score on them. The Saints went 0/4 in the period while Okotoks went 0/2 on the man advantage.
The offensive explosion would continue in the third period as Scott Sandilands would cut from the left side of the blue line to the middle and use the Oiler defender as a screen and tie the game at 3-3.
Okotoks would go to the penalty box for tripping and give the Saints their seventh power play opportunity of the night. After a scramble attempt that saw Felix Haibock get robbed by Silverberg, the Oilers would take another penalty to make it a 5-on-3 power play for Spruce Grove. The Saints would snap the puck around before Haibock cleaned up a rebound from Kohyn Pipke to take a 4-3 lead.
Spruce Grove’s Blair Erickson would throw a thunderous hit to Will Watson to dislodge the puck and send the Saints back the other way on the rush. Gavin McNeil fed Adam Perron into the offensive zone on the right side before passing to Lucas Achim for a backdoor tap in. Saints would lead 5-3.
Okotoks wasn’t done yet as they would finally respond with just under six minutes to go in the third. Caden Lyndsay would score from a sharp angle and bring the Oilers within a goal.
Much like the home opener, the Saints would get into penalty trouble by taking a pair of penalties in the final four minutes. The Saints would kill off the first one and were 20 seconds away from icing the game when Okotoks would win a puck battle at the blue line to stay in the zone and work a tic tac goal finished off by captain Jamie Hikida on the back door to tie it 5-5 with 12.5 seconds left and force overtime.
Patrick Woods came flying into the zone looking to end the game for the Saints but was stopped by Silverberg. Haibock would be denied as well as Silverberg dove out of his crease to swat the puck away. Brett Barnes would find himself in the right place at the right time and send the loose puck into an almost empty net to emerge as the hero for Spruce Grove.
The Saints will hit the road on the weekend and do a Southern Alberta swing through Brooks on Friday, September 25 and Okotoks on Saturday, September 26. Games can be watched on FloHockey.tv or listened to on the Saints Radio Network.
