Scantlebury and Kings double up Voyageurs

Brent Forster - Red Deer Polytechnic Athletics 

Red Deer, AB –  The Red Deer Polytechnic Kings stuck with the game plan Friday evening against the Portage College Voyageurs.

A strong start to the game coupled with effective special teams helped the Kings drop the Voyageurs 4-2.

"That was part of the game plan. We knew they were going to be a physical team, so we wanted to come out hard. We are a big team, but we also have speed so we wanted to make sure that we use it," said Trevor Keeper, Red Deer Polytechnic Kings Hockey Head Coach. "Last game when we played SAIT, we were skating but we were pretty soft to play against. We addressed that and worked on it all week - battles, one-on-ones. We got out to a good start."

The Kings struck twice with the man advantage and killed off 11-of-12 penalties in the victory.                

Lapointe (91)

"We worked on our special teams a lot this week," explained Keeper. "In the end when it got to 4-2, we got the guys to focus and stay with the game plan and deal with some of the adversity."

The home team opened the scoring at 15:05 of the first period. Kings captain Tyler Podgorenko snapped one from the point, and with traffic in front forward Mathieu Lapointe tipped it past Portage College goaltender Jacob Gnidziejko on the power play.

Just over a minute later, Tucker Scantlebury lifted the Kings ahead by a pair with a wrist shot high on the glove side.

That two goal edge held until 18:16 of the middle frame. Estevan's Kyle Salaway converted a cross crease pass from Jacob Kendall for a 3-0 Kings' lead. It was Salaway's fourth goal in four games. 

At 2:22 of the third period, Cruz Cote used his speed up the left and fired a shot under Gnidziejko's glove to extend the Polytechnic's lead to 4-0.

Two minutes later, Ty Budai beat Kings netminder Arik Weersink to get the visitors on the board. Brayden Dale added the Voyageurs' second marker on the power play, but they couldn't pull even. The Red Deer Polytechnic Kings picked up their second win of the young season.

The Kings outshot the Voyageurs 33-31.

Tucker Scantlebury, a Carpentry student, received the North Star Sports Kings Player of the Game award. 

"He played really well. We lost a player early in the game to injury so Tucker had to double shift and he kept going," said Keeper. "He grinded out a good game and got a couple points and made things happen for his line."

Ty Budai was selected as the top performer for the Voyageurs.

The entire Red Deer Polytechnic team contributed to a solid defensive performance. 

"A lot times, you think of the defensive zone coverage. But before the puck even gets there, if you are good on the forecheck and you're good positionally in the offensive zone the other team doesn't get a lot of clean attacks or odd man rushes, which is what we gave up too many against SAIT," said Keeper.

"We worked on that hard this week and that was the focus of our game plan, to make it hard to come through the neutral zone and make it hard for them to get out of their defensive zone. That results in less scoring chances against."

The Red Deer Polytechnic Kings (2-1-1-0) will resume conference play against the Briercrest College Clippers (0-2-1-0) in Saskatchewan on Friday, January 21 at 7 pm. Before that contest the Kings have a pair of exhibition games planned against Mount Royal University and the University of Alberta on January 8 and 14 respectively.

The Portage College Voyageurs (0-4-0-0) will host the NAIT Ooks (4-0-0-0) on Friday, January 14 at 7 pm.