The 100 Mile House Wranglers duelled with Cariboo rivals the Quesnel River Rush this past weekend.
On home ice on Friday, Dec. 15 the Wranglers claimed a 4-3 overtime victory on home ice while on Saturday the River Rush came out on top in a 5-4 shootout win in Quesnel. Wranglers coach Levi Stuart said it's a result he intends to build on to make his team more dominant.
"It's never a good thing when you have a home and home with a division rival and you get three points and they get three points," Stuart said. "It's kind of a wash. Those are weekends for us that are eight-point potential weekends. There is definitely stuff we have to work on and find ways to be better against Quesnel. They have a couple of really good players who seem to find a way to score against us every time that we play them. We have to focus on finding a way to shut those guys down and play our game from the very beginning of the game from puck drop right to the end."
On Friday night the Wranglers got off to a slow start on the scoring front going down 3-0 by the end of the second period. Stuart noted that while his team was outshooting the River Rush close to 2-1, the majority of the shots ended up in the goalie's chest preventing them from taking full control of the game.
It was in the third period the Wranglers began to rally with Luke McFarlane, Matthew Balderston and Kole Duquette tying the game and forcing it into overtime. During the overtime period, it was longtime Wrangler defencemen Ty Smoluk who scored the game-winning goal.
"Tyler Smoluk got the overtime winner but he was also a horse back there. Both games we only had five defencemen in the lineup so those guys were playing a lot of minutes," Stuart noted. "Tyler was the big one on Friday for being a horse, playing a lot of minutes, shutting down guys and hopping on the offence."
During Saturday night's game, Stuart said the team once more got off to a slow start, in part due to injuries and sickness, going down 3-0 once again. The Wranglers managed to battle back however, tying the game 4-4 and forcing it into an overtime shootout the River Rush ultimately won.
"It wasn't quite the same energy level, not quite as dominating on the performance, especially on the scoreboard going down 3-0 again," Stuart said. "Coming out with better starts is definitely something we're going to be working on and focusing on as a team."
One bright spot on Saturday was the emergence of the Wranglers' new forward Diego Cazac who scored his first goal with the team and got an assist. Stuart remarked Cazac's goal was a highlight of the game, if not the year.
Stuart said that while the Wranglers are currently the top team in the Doug Birks Division of the KIJHL, with an 11-win to eight-loss record, he is not comfortable with where the team is. He noted that every loss to their division rivals is a loss of potential points and that the team has only played a few games with the other two veteran teams in their division, the Kamloops Storm and Chase Heat.
"We always want to continue to improve. That's our big thing as a team, never taking our foot off the pedal as far as being comfortable (goes)," Stuart explained. "We want to be the team that improves week after week, month after month, no matter where we are in the standings. Even if we were higher up in the standings I would say the same thing."
The Wranglers won't return to home ice again until Thursday, Dec. 5 for a match against the Kamloops Storm.
