The Orange and Black picked up their third win in a row on Tuesday night, beating the visiting Neepawa Natives 4-1. The game was the Flyers final regular season meeting against Neepawa and resulted in their fourth straight victory against the Natives.
Returning home after picking up a pair of road wins on the weekend, the Winkler Flyers welcomed the Neepawa Natives just three days after defeating them 5-2 in Neepawa this past Saturday. Winkler had a (3-1-1) record in their five previous games against Neepawa with the Flyers winning the last three.
Just like their game three days earlier, the Flyers opened the scoring just over five minutes into the first period. On the power-play, thanks to a too many men on the ice penalty against the Natives, Evan Last tipped in a Tristan Keck wrist shot giving the Flyers a 1-0 lead. Winkler native Jordan Wall also assisted on the power-play goal.
Just over three minutes later, Reid Burak sprung Kayden Jarvis on a breakaway and the rookie forward snuck home his 13th goal of the season to put the Flyers up by two goals.
Early in the second period, the Flyers went back on the power-play and made the Natives pay again. Just 1:01 into the middle frame, Zak Hicks and Jon Carlson assisted on Bryce Enns’ 10th of the year and the Flyers had a 3-0 lead. Just before the five minute mark of the second, Neepawa scored a power-play goal of their own to cut Winkler’s lead to 3-1.
Dasan Sydora, who was making his fifth straight start, made a number of key stops in the second to keep his team in front. The Natives were outshooting the Flyers 29-23 through 40 minutes, 17-7 alone in the second period, but the Flyers still led by two after two periods thanks in large part to their goaltender.
Winkler saved their best for the third period but were unable to add to their lead until the very end thanks to the play of Neepawa goaltender Alex Henry. Outshooting Neepawa 21-5 in the final period, Scott Gall put the game to bed with an empty net goal with 33 seconds left on the clock to make the final 4-1 for Winkler. It was the Morden native’s 20th goal of the season and fourth in his last three games.
Sydora finished the game with 33 saves while increasing his record to (24-8-4). The Flyers went 2-for-4 on the power-play and 4-for-5 on the penalty-kill.
The Flyers (28-14-10) will look to stretch their winning streak to four games when they travel to Swan Valley (23-21-6) on Saturday night in the first of two straight road games. Winkler is (3-0) against the Stampeders this season and have outscored them 14-2 in their previous three contests. Following Saturday’s game in Swan River, Winkler will head to Virden to play the Oil Capitals on Sunday.
Winkler is now just one point back of the Steinbach Pistons for third place in the MJHL Standings with eight games left in the regular season. The Flyers are also four points ahead of the fifth place Virden Oil Capitals. Both the Pistons and Oil Caps have two games in hand on Winkler.
Both games this weekend will not be heard on Country 88.9FM.