It was a game of chances last night, as the Kelowna Knights played host to our Halifax Raiders. Luckily, our Raiders were able to take advantage of those chances, mostly from unlikely places, and escape Prospera Place with a hard-fought 4-3 win to even out their record to .500 as we find ourselves a little over a quarter of the way through S48. With goals coming from unlikely places and solid goaltending, the Raiders held off a furious rally late in the game to come away with the one goal victory. If this game is any indication of the future, it is going to be a tough slog for Halifax through the rest of the season unless our boys can continue to take advantage of opposition mistakes while limiting their own and continue to have players step up against resilient foes.

The first period saw both teams playing back and forth hockey through the first ten minutes before the scoring finally opened up.  Our Raiders capitalized first from an unlikely source to start the day’s scoring. Thanks to a power play opportunity, the Raiders extra man offense was able to do some slick tic-tac-toe passing to open up a shooting lane that defenseman Haley Knight was able to take advantage of with Knight slotting home a high and hard laser from just inside the blue line. There were more offensive fireworks to come from Knight as she followed up her goal with another laser from the wing. This time, however, she clanged it off the post with the rebound going to a wide-open Freddie Sweeney, a third line winger, who tapped it into the net over a sprawling Malcolm Weekes. Sweeney’s timely goal, his fourth of the season, helped the Raiders gain a 2-0 advantage that Kelowna would continue to chip away at but never recover from. Late in the first period the Knights closed the gap a little bit and made it 2-1 off a power play goal by defensemen Piotr Horvat, who rebounded his own shot past Biz Nasty and gave the Knights some momentum going into the locker room for the first intermission.


What momentum was mustered at the close of the first period was quickly wiped away at the start of the second period as Halifax earned a power play opportunity less than a minute into the period and struck it home off an Esa Parmborg blast. The Knights, true to form, refused to quit, however, and closed the gap again with a goal five minutes later from Raquel Castillo Gutierrez who blasted a one-timer home to make it a 3-2 game going into the final period.


After the Castillo Gutierrez goal, both defenses settled down and locked in on one another as neither team could take advantage of opportunities afforded to them until late in the third period. With only seven minutes to play, Halifax winger Freddie Sweeney scored his second goal of the night, deflecting a shot from Taisei-Tiikeri Wawazat who himself earned his third assist of the night on the play. Just over a minute later, Kelowna’s offense answered yet again scoring a goal with five and a half minutes to play to make it 4-3. With time winding down, the Knights put up a furious rally of shots but were stonewalled by Biz Nasty who tallied four saves in the game’s final minutes to hold on for a Halifax victory.


While this victory was much needed and ultimately well deserved, the future schedule only gets tougher and hopefully Halifax can build on the momentum of this victory to keep finding ways to get tough wins. For Kelowna, they ended the night wondering what could have been. Were it not for a few untimely mistakes, this game could have turned out very differently. From Kelowna, this is Quentin Roschambecler signing off for this edition of the Raiders Review.

**shout out for what it's worth to @SecondSucks22 for teaching me how to insert gifs**