It was poetic justice for Ben Brar and the Prince George Spruce Kings, who won a hard-fought 3-2 overtime thriller against the Chilliwack Chiefs to grab a 3-2 series lead.
The Thursday slugfest was capped off by a masterful overtime effort by the line of Brar, Kyle Johnson and Nolan Welsh who hemmed the Chiefs in their defensive zone, and all the 19-year-old power forward had to do was out wait Chilliwack netminder Daniel Chenard.
“It feels good but it all started with a nice exit pass by Johnson as he found me streaking down the wall, so it was a complete team effort tonight,” says Brar.
“We knew it was going to be a hard working goal in overtime and we stuck with it, won the battle and it kind of came to me in the slot.”
The Game Winner! pic.twitter.com/acTQv13wSv
— Spruce Kings (@SpruceKings) March 9, 2018
The game-winner could be summed as redemption for the Spruce Kings who had a go-ahead goal off of Brar’s stick called back on a 5-on-3 power play due to incidental contact with Chenard.
Johnson adds it was very important for the hosts to claw back and have a short memory after the air was let out of the balloon so to speak.
“There is a lot of emotion in a game like that, obviously when you work so hard and we felt we executed really well on that power-play it is hard to lose something like that by having it taken away but you have to be mature about it and keep moving forward.”
“It’s two good teams out there and neither one is going to give an inch, we’re both resilient and leading into the next game we are going to have to keep it in the front of our minds.”
Prince George actually trailed twice in this game as former Spruce King Bryan Allbee opened the scoring for the Chiefs half way through the opening period giving the visitors a 1-0 lead after 20 minutes.
The game opened up in the second, Liam Watson-Brawn let a wrist shot go from the point past a screen Chenard tying the game at one.
Both teams traded goals once more as Jared Turcotte found the back of the net for Chilliwack while Patrick Cozzi answered for the Spruce Kings.
Evan DeBrouwer made 22 saves in the win for Prince George.
The best-of-seven Mainland Division semi-final is going back to Chilliwack for game six on Saturday.
If a game seven is necessary it would be played on Sunday at 7PM from the Rolling Mix Concrete Arena (RMCA).