The Smoke Eaters knock off the Vees Wednesday night in Penticton as they take all two points back to Trail. The Smokies now have points in their last six games with a 5-0-0-1 record.
The Smoke Eaters opened the scoring with less than five minutes to go in the first, as Kent Johnson would score his league leading 16th on the power play. In a period that was back and forth, the Smoke Eaters didn’t get many chances but when they did they made it count. Logan Terness who made his 11th straight start for the Smoke Eaters had to make 8 solid saves in the opening frame. The Vees out shot the Smoke Eaters 8-4 in the opening period.
In the second the play was open and end to end, a style that worked in the Smokies favour as a 2-on-0 lead to Philippe Lapointe picking up his sixth goal of the year and his fifth in four games. The Smoke Eaters continued to create opportunities with numerous odd man rushes that lead to the Vees calling a timeout to sort things out. The Smoke Eaters kept poring on the pressure out shooting the Vees 16-12 in another end to end period.
The Vees came out with a new fight that they hadn’t had in the first 40 minutes and would finally beat Logan Terness at 3:06. Steve Holtz took a shot from the point that Lukas Sillinger deflected a shot past the Smoke Eaters net minder to make it 2-1. That would be all the Vees would get as Terness would stop 41/42 shots. The Vees would again take a too-many men penalty at 14:23. The play was close but the Vees were sent to the box late that caused quite the reaction from the Vees bench and the crowd. Jay O’Brien would also get a misconduct on the play and would miss the final five minutes. The Smoke Eaters made Penticton pay as Johnson would score his second of the night on the power play to make it 3-1. Lapointe would score the empty netter to make it 4-1 and send the Smokies back to the Kootenay’s with all two points.
The Smoke Eaters now sit at 14-1-1-1 over the last 17 games and sit 3rd in the interior with 31 points, just two behind the Vees and Salmon Arm Silverbacks.
They’ll host the Vernon Vipers on Friday and Saturday night for a weekend double header at Cominco. Both games start at 7pm.
