Broncos stun Ice with comeback win

A wild comeback at the Credit Union iPlex on Tuesday night.

Jake DeBrusk scored the shootout winner as the Swift Current Broncos came back from down 5-2 to beat the Kootenay Ice 7-6.

“It was a great finish for us coming back in the third,” said Broncos forward Glenn Gawdin. “Not the start we wanted I know it's been a couple of games now we've come out pretty flat so that's something we want to work on.”

Despite the big deficit Gawdin didn't see any doubt in their dressing room during the second intermission.

“One of the guys said hey do you believe we can come back in this game,” Gawdin said. “Everybody said yes so I don't think we had a doubt in our mind that we couldn't come back. We've done it a few times this year and last year. The leaders on our team really help us there.”

It was the third straight game where Coda Gordon put up three points for the Broncos as he scored twice and had an assist. All of his offence came in the third period as his line with Gawdin and Jay Merkley came to life when their team needed them.

“We started to play our game,” Gawdin said. “We're a defence first team so if we took care of that the offence would come. We just stayed to our systems and did the little things right which helped us out with some bounces offensively.”

The Broncos got behind early on quick goals by Luke Philp, Tim Bozon and Jaedon Descheneau as Kootenay struck three times on their first six shots.

“It might have looked as though we didn't have a great start and didn't play that good in the first period,” said Broncos assistant coach Jamie Heward. “But we actually had a lot of good, quality chances. We had our breakdowns and didn't play as good as we wanted in our own end, but if we had scored on a couple of our chances it would have been a tie game or just down by one.”

“Even when we went in after the second period and we were down 5-2 both Mark (Lamb) and I looked at each other and said this game is winnable.”

The Broncos got goals from Tanner LeSann in the first period and Jake DeBrusk in the second period, but every time they closed the gap the Ice would pull ahead again.

“All we did was make a couple of adjustments,” Heward said. “We activiated our D... we were putting a little more pressure when we had the puck in their end... the biggest thing with that team is if their forwards have the puck they're dangerous. They kind of put you on your heels. If they puck is in their end and they're not handling it and coming at us for offence that's good for us.”

“There was no big secret it was just continue to get pucks at the net, make their D have to work and make their forwards have to play some defence. It just created opportunities for us.”

The Broncos got two goals from Gordon in the third period to cut the Kootenay lead to 5-4. Ayrton Nikkel tied the game with 3:37 to play as he joined the rush and finished a nice DeBrusk pass to tie the game for the first time. Levi Cable gave the Ice their lead back only 50 seconds later, but the Broncos again tied it 1:22 later.

DeBrusk scored the only goal of the shootou and Travis Child stopped all four Ice shooters. Child came on in relief of Landon Bow after he allowed four goals on eighteen shots.

The Broncos outshot the Ice 38-34 and went 0 for 2 on the power play compared to Kootenay going 1-1. Swift Current wrapped up their homestand at 4-1 and head to Saskatoon Wednesday night.

“They're a team that has nothing to lose,” Gawdin said. “They're just kind of a run and gun team, they play all four lines... sometimes that works for them and sometimes it doesn't. The one time we lost there we kind of started to play their game and not ours. We've just got to stick to our system.”

You can hear Wednesday's game on The Eagle 94.1 FM starting with our pre-game show at 6:30pm.

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