The Home Hardware Midget AAA Legionnaires came ready to play against the league’s top team, the Saskatoon Blazers, but fell just short in the high-scoring affair.

In the match-up of the top two teams in the standings, the Blazers took the first meeting of a two-game set in a 5-4 result.

Swift Current jumped out early, leading the Blazers 1-0 through the opening frame thanks to rookie forward Logan Linklater pouncing on a loose puck and burying it.

After Saskatoon tied the game up just minutes into the second, Swift responded with another go-ahead goal courtesy of Linklater midway through the middle period.

Swift maintained pressure in the game, as yet another Blazers’ goal two minutes into the third period was answered by the Legionnaires once again, this time by forward Boston Bird, to go ahead 3-2 with 15 minutes to play.

However, Saskatoon pounced on some Swift Current miscues, as Blazers’ forward Josh Nagy polished off a natural hat-trick on a seven-minute span – two of which came on the man-advantage.

“The goals we gave up on the penalty-kill we made a mistake – the forward was out of position and they passed right through,” said head coach Darren Evjen. “Then we have the puck on our tape and we give it to them for the goal. Those are the things we can correct, that’s the good thing. So, we’ve just got to go back, do some video tonight and tomorrow, and we’ll be better tomorrow.”

Down 5-3 with the net empty, Swift managed to cut the deficit to one, as defenceman Hendrik DeKlerk wired home a missile from the point.

Pushing late, the Legionnaires just couldn’t find late-game heroics this time around, falling one bounce short.

D-man Kersey Reich had himself a three-assist night, leading the team in points.

Linklater had two goals, DeKlerk and Bird added assists for two-point games, and Mason Strutt added a pair of helpers in the loss.

For Linklater, it was his first-career multi-goal game at the Midget AAA level, as he was rewarded with significant ice time in key situations throughout the game. 

“Coming in as a first year, you can’t really expect lots of minutes – you’ve just got to take it game by game,” said Linklater. “Tonight, I felt good, he (head coach Darren Evjen) trusted me out there, and I think that was the key to it.”

“I thought he was really going today, and so did (assistant coach Andy) Blanke. You could tell right from the get-go he had lots of jump,” said Evjen about his rookie forward. “We tried to get him out as much as we could. He rewarded our team with a couple goals.”

“It was other things too, that’s probably the best he’s played positionally. He’s a great player, he really is. You can tell just watching the way he plays, he plays for keeps. It was a good game for him.”

Despite the individual success in the contest, Linklater noted that falling one goal short of a big-time W against the Blazers left some serious motivation ahead of Saturday’s rematch.

“We know how they play now. We felt like they took the two points from us,” he said. “I felt like we played good tonight, just got to come back stronger tomorrow. We know where we’ve got to get better, we know how they play… just do the little things that we didn’t do tonight.”

Rookie netminder Jacob Herman stopped 23 of 28 shots for the Legionnaires (10-5-0-0), who look to bounce back against the Blazers (16-2-0-1) Saturday at 3:45 p.m. from the Innovation Credit Union iPlex.