Salmon Arm, B.C. – Coming off their first loss, the Salmon Arm Silverbacks returned home looking for a bounce back against the Cranbrook Bucks.
The game started slanted against the Silverbacks who took a warmup violation penalty and had to come out of the gates shorthanded. An early test came up successful as the Silverbacks killed off the penalty and then jumped on the attack right after. 25 seconds after Ty Paisley stepped out of the box, Reid Varkonyi led a two-on-one down the ice and slid the puck over to Maddux Martin, who found the back of the net. The lead didn’t last too long as four minutes later, Jack Silich was parked down below the goal line and connected with a slot pass to a wide-open Julian Frias who wired it home. Off the ensuing faceoff, Oskar Cederqvist took an interference penalty sending Salmon Arm to the powerplay. With the man advantage, JJ Monteiro took the puck into the zone, danced around the defender, and connected with Jacob Bonkowski back door for the powerplay goal. The Bucks were able to kill off a couple of penalties to end the opening period.
The second period was filled with back-and-forth action but no action involving the score sheet until later in the frame. At the 15:54 mark, Isaac Lambert picks up the offensive turnover and feeds Riley Ashe for the tap-in goal for his first career BCHL goal. Physicality came at the end of the period as Tristan Allen took a dangerous hit to the head by Luke Pfoh with 45 seconds left, which resulted in a two-minute illegal hit to the head and a ten-minute misconduct. That gave the Silverbacks the powerplay heading into the final period.
Unable to capitalize on the 1:15 of powerplay time to start off the third period the Silverbacks took advantage of other special teams play. Three and a half minutes in, Lambert and Bryce Sookro took penalties on the same play, resulting in open ice for both teams and a four-on-four. During the two minutes of more skating room, Ryan Gillespie took the puck down the length of the ice, leading a two-on-one, but elected to fire it into the back of the net himself. Striking quickly, 39 seconds later, Monteiro leads another odd man rush which sees Varkonyi be the one to wire it home into the open net. The scoring didn’t stop as the Silverbacks were looking to put icing on the cake. Lorin Froidevaux grabbed the puck at his own blue line and used his speed to get around the defenders and slide it backdoor to Cole Cooksey to score his first career BCHL goal and give the Silverbacks the 6-1 win.
Eli Pulver made 26/27 saves in his Silverbacks debut after a long injury recovery and Ashe and Cooksey scored there first career BCHL goals to lead the Silverbacks to the win, pushing their record to 3-1.
