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Thunder Cats split pair of weekend games

Two points keeps team in second place in Eddie Mountain Division
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Jeff Banman Thunder Cats goalie #31 Kyle Michalovsky

A five-point weekend by captain Liam Plunkett highlighted a home ice loss and a win on the road for the Creston Valley Thunder Cats.

Despite outshooting the visiting Castlegar Rebels 45-26, the Cats couldn’t match their opponents scoring, and went down to a 5-3 loss at the John Bucyk Arena on Friday night.

“It was a sloppy game on our part, we weren’t competing for pucks and were leaky in the defensive zone all game,” Thunder Cat coach Brad Tobin said on Sunday. “It shows that in order to be successful in this league, the work ethic has to be there from start to finish every single night.”

Shawn Campbell opened the scoring for the visitors in the opening frame, but Aiden Wong (Bryce Sturm and Plunkett) tied it up just over a minute later. Ed Lindsay gave the Rebels a 2-1 lead after 20 minutes.

Two goals by Everett Hicks increased his team’s lead to 4-1 in the second period.

The Thunder Cats made it close with a power play effort by Jack McArdle and a short-handed goal by Plunkett, but John Moeller clinched it for the Rebels with a last minute goal.

On Saturday the team travelled to Columbia Valley and it took an unassisted effort by Justen James to give the good guys a hard-earned 5-4 victory. Jame’s goal was his fourth point of the night.

After giving up the opening goal to the Rockies’ Jack Lastwika, the T-Cats got out of the first period in a tie after Plunkett scored, with an assist from Mitchell Wolfe.

James (Plunkett and McArdle), Colten Witter (Darby Berg and James) and James (Plunkett) notched second period goals, with the Rockies keeping it close after getting goals from Chase Hawkins and Tyler Nypower.

Creston couldn’t hang on to their 4-3 lead in the final period though, and gave up a power play effort by Mike Dyck.

That paved the way into overtime, where James emerged as the hero.

Again Creston dominated in the shots department, pouring 56 shots on the Rockies’ Ben Kelsch, who stopped 51. Creston goaltender Levi Mitchell stopped 28 of 32 shots by Columbia Valley.

“Levi Mitchell showed well in his first game in net for us, he made some big saves and got settled in early,” Tobin said. “Liam Plunkett was a workhorse, led by example all night. It was great to see the power play finally start to click with a couple goals. We still need to keep improving in certain areas of our game, but it was a good win to build on moving forward.”

Creston hosts the Spokane Braves on Friday night at 7:30, then have a full week off before returning to action on October 20th.