Sherwood Park, Alberta – The Brooks Bandits fell 7-3 to the Sherwood Park Crusaders at the Randy Rosen Rink Saturday night. Despite it being highly contested for the first two periods, the Crusaders pulled away with five unanswered goals in the third frame.
Braeden O’Keefe, who was ejected in the third period, opened up the scoring for the Crusaders 1:03 into the first period. Liam Fitzpatrick scored his second goal of the season on the power play with a beautiful tic-tac-toe passing sequence. Fitzpatrick now has goals in back to back games. With nine seconds left in the first period, Tommy Coccaro converted and gave the Crusaders a one goal lead heading into the second frame.
The lone goal in the second period came from Alexei Zhukov’s stick in the exact same place he scored his goal Friday. He rifled one past the Sherwood Park net minder blocker side on the latter half of a four minute power play.
Sherwood Park scored five goals in the third period unanswered. Joseph Sinclair (1:01), Stevie Grumley (4:59), Gleb Semenko (6:27, 6:49) and Tommy Coccaro (10:29) were the goal scorers. Zach Zahara was pulled after goal number seven.
Jacob Gibbons came in, made his BCHL debut and made four saves on four shots in relief.
Kamyl Chemrouk was able to tap his second goal of the season in late (18:17). He now is at two goals and five assists for the season with at least one point in every game played.
A bright spot for the Bandits tonight was their power play. It was 2/5 tonight and maintained significant offensive zone time despite constant pressure from Sherwood Park.
The Bandits host the Cranbrook Bucks and the Trail Smoke Eaters next weekend at the CRA. Puck drop for both games is at 7 MT.
