The Kelowna Rockets put in a game effort on Tuesday night. Yet it wasn’t enough, and now they’re down to their last strike.
At Prospera Place, Matteo Danis scored the game-winning goal, at 1:22 of overtime, as the Prince George Cougars beat Kelowna 4-3.
Prince George now leads the best-of-seven series 3-0 and can eliminate the Rockets with a victory in Game 4 on Wednesday night in Kelowna.
“The overtime, it was 1:12?” Rockets head coach Kris Mallette asked in his post-game interview.
“You work so hard and it’s a game of inches. You take a half-a-second off on the backcheck and it’s in the back of your net. It’s tough because our guys competed, they played.”
The Rockets were outclassed by the Cougars in games 1 and 2 in Prince George, with the nation’s No. 1 team winning 4-0 and 5-0.
Tuesday’s game was a different beast, with fifth-ranked Kelowna outshooting top-ranked Prince George 35-33.
However, the Rockets went 0-for-5 on the power play, while the Cougars were 2-for-4 – a telling sign of separation.
“We didn’t score, but we didn’t lose any momentum,” Mallette offered.
“We had chances, we had 18 shots on net in the first period. We had opportunities that they were blocking and sacrificing.
“It was a lot different than what it was up in Prince George, where our power play couldn’t gain any traction. I think besides the fact it didn’t score, we did a lot of really good things on it and that’s something to build on.”
Hudson Thornton, Ondrej Becher and Borya Valis also scored for Prince George. The Cougars opened the scoring but trailed 2-1 midway through the second before taking a 3-2 lead midway through the third.
Ethan Neutens, Michael Cicek and captain Gabriel Szturc, who made it 3-3 at 14:08 of the third, replied for Kelowna, which hit two posts in the final five minutes.
Joshua Ravensbergen made 32 saves for the Cougars, with Jari Kykkanen stopping 29 shots for the Rockets.
The game-winner came on a three-on-three rush, with Danis taking a centring feed and banking it in.
“It was a roller-coaster of a game,” Danis said on the team’s website. “Really close, just back-and-forth. Our special teams were huge tonight, scoring two.
“It just came down to (overtime). It was a playoff game and we were lucky we got out of it on top.”
Kelowna’s coach complimented his team afterwards.
“We did a lot of really good things today, our compete, our sacrifice,” Mallette said.
“(The win) was there and we had opportunities; we hit some posts and we worked hard.
“We have to take that same mindset into tomorrow. We have to play the same way or better because if we don’t, we know what the end result is.”