Chilliwack (Files from Penticton Vees) – The Penticton Vees couldn’t muster much offence as they dropped a 4-0 score to the Chilliwack Chiefs on Friday night at the South Okanagan Events Centre.
It was a good opening period for the home side as the Vees spent much of the opening frame inside of the offensive zone and outshot Chilliwack by a 12-1 margin after 20 minutes but it was the visiting Chiefs who took a 1-0 lead courtesy of a power play.
Moments before the marker, the Vees had their best chance of the period which came in the form of a 2-on-1 shorthanded as Jay O’Brien was able to drag a puck around a defender at the blue line and get out through centre ice and moved into the right face-off circle as he centered a puck intended for Lukas Sillinger that just skipped over his tape as Chilliwack brought the puck back the other way and took a 1-0 lead.
Tommy Lyons played a midpoint pass down to the right face-off circle as Cooper Moore slid a pass across to the left-wing where Nikita Nesterenko collected and beat Vees goaltender Yaniv Perets on the glove side on the man advantage to give Chilliwack a 1-0 lead at the 13:45 mark of the opening frame.
The Vees started off the 2nd period with an early power play and got their best chance of the night to find the back of the net with Jackson Niedermayer taking a Sillinger pass at the goal line as he tried to send the puck to the glove side where Chiefs goaltender Mathieu Caron snapped his glove and made the stop to keep the Chiefs lead at a goal.
Chilliwack jumped ahead by a 2-0 score as they started to bring an abundance of pressure in the 2nd period. Ethan Bowen extended the lead to a pair of goals as he spun and fired a puck from the right face-off circle past an unsuspecting Perets over his right shoulder that gave the Chiefs a 2-0 advantage at the 7:36 mark of the 2nd period.
Just over two minutes after that, the Chiefs pushed their lead to 3-0 at the 9:50 mark with Peter Reynolds extending the advantage. Reynolds knocked down a puck inside the blue line and zipped around the Vees defence before moving in on Perets and sneaking a puck past his blocker side for a 3-0 advantage.
Perets made a couple of breakaway stops in the 3rd period before Clark Nelson capped off the scoring for the visitors on a break as he got behind the Vees defence and beat Perets on the blocker side at the 8:48 mark of the final frame to get ahead by a 4-0 score.
Yaniv Perets made 25 saves on 29 shots in his 5th defeat of the season while Mathieu Caron turned aside all 30 shots thrown his way in his 9th win of the season and his second shutout of the year.
