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WHL Edmonton Oil Kings

Knight Earns First Win as Oil Kings Make It Seven Straight

March 22, 2021 - Western Hockey League (WHL)
Edmonton Oil Kings News Release


Edmonton, AB - The Edmonton Oil Kings (7-0-0-0) continued their early season perfection as they defeated the Red Deer Rebels (2-6-2-0-0) 5-2 on Sunday night.

The win was the Oil Kings seventh straight to open the campaign but also the first for rookie goaltender Colby Knight who made his first career start making 16 saves.

"It feels amazing," said Knight. "I had a dream about it last night and to have it happen, it's just awesome."

"The guys played great in front of me tonight and made my job easy. It's a great group of guys and it means a lot that they were so excited for me when the game ended."

The Oil Kings did a good job of suppressing the Rebels shot attempts for most of the night, but with the game still very much hanging in the balance, Knight would come up with eight key saves in the third period to foil any comeback attempt.

"I thought he played a really clean game," said Oi Kings assistant coach Luke Pierce on his young goalie. "He was very composed, after they got that first one I thought he was really able to settle in."

On the offensive side of the puck the Oil Kings would get goals from all throughout their lineup with five-different players finding the back of the net, all at even-strength.

"To win seven in a row in a really bizarre type of year it speaks to our guys ability to identify situations to find ways to win games in different ways," added Pierce. "It's a sign of a good team, you need different guys doing different things. It's a credit to our leadership group here lately and especially tonight I thought we were much better as a group."

Kaid Oliver opened the scoring with his fourth goal of the year at the 11:02 mark of the first period as he finished off a two-on-one rush firing a shot top-shelf on a setup from Dylan Guenther. The Rebels quickly answered back with Zak Smith taking advantage of a defensive zone turnover by the Oil Kings and firing a slot-shot over the shoulder of Knight to tie the game just 11-seconds later.

The game stayed tied until 4:41 into the second period when Oil Kings captain Scott Atkinson would hoist a backhand upstairs from in tight on Rebels goaltender Ethan Anders for his third goal in his last three games. Again though, the Rebels would answer back, this time on a great individual rush by veteran Josh Tarzwell as he was able to get in alone on Knight and slip a puck just past his outstretched leg with 8:06 left in the middle frame. The Oil Kings returned fire just 1:40 later with Tyler Horstmann guiding home his second goal of the season on rebound generated by a Logan Dowhaniuk point-shot. Before the period was out, the team would extend their lead to 4-2 with Ethan Cap scoring his first goal of the season on a sweet three-way passing play from Guenther and Jake Neighbours.

Josh Williams would put the exclamation point on the victory with his fifth goal of the season and fourth of the weekend as he pounced on a rebound in front of the Rebels net off an Atkinson tip with just 4:16 left in the game.

"He's been finding the back of the net," said Pierce on Williams. "Tonight, it was a simple net drive to tap it in and on Friday night he had some really nice goals, so he can score in different ways. He alleviates some of the pressure on Dylan (Guenther) and Jake's (Neighbours) line. When you can find those secondary matchups to keep teams honest with guys like Josh, Scotty (Atkinson) and Carter's (Souch) line it's been what's been helping us pick up the slack when we need to."

The win gave the Oil Kings their first three-in-three sweep since late October of 2018. This also marked the first three-in-three situation for the Oil Kings in over two years.

"It's not something we're use to, we didn't play in any of them last year," added Pierce. "I thought we showed a lot of maturity tonight, it wasn't always clean and simple for us, but I thought in the third period we really controlled the pace of the game and found a way to bring it home. Anytime you can win three in a row in one weekend it's huge, regardless of how nice we thought they were."

The Oil Kings return to action on Friday, March 26 when they welcome the Calgary Hitmen to the Downtown Community Arena at 7 PM.

Notes:

The Oil Kings seventh straight win matched their longest win streak from last season.

The Oil Kings have now won 14-straight games vs. Red Deer.

Scott Atkinson and Josh Williams each had a goal and an assist. Atkinson is now on a three-game goal scoring streak.

Josh Williams finished the weekend with four goals and two assists.

With two assists tonight, Carter Souch is now sitting on 99 career points.

Jake Neighbours two assists tonight extended his personal point streak to seven games (2G, 10A). He now leads the WHL in assists with 10.

Dylan Guenther picked up two assists and now leads the WHL in goals (8) and points (15).

Tonight marked the first game this season the Oil Kings did not score a power play goal, they went zero-for-three on the man-advantage while the penalty kill was a perfect three-for-three.

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Western Hockey League Stories from March 22, 2021


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