A four goal first period propelled the Yorkton Sherring Gold Peewee Terriers to a 5-2 win over their Highway 10 rival Melville Millionaires this past Thursday at the Farrell Agencies Arena in Yorkton.
The win was their fourth in five games in SSMHL Peewee Division play, giving the Sherring Gold Terriers a 4-1-0 record and eight points; good enough for a share of the league lead with the Swift Current Â鶹´«Ã½AVwest Terminal Broncos (3-0-2) and five points up on both the Weyburn Youngfellow Wings (1-1-1) and Moose Jaw Warriors (1-2-1), who sit tied for third and fourth respectively.
The Estevan Westmoreland Bruins (0-4-0) and Melville Millionaires (0-1-0) round out the six team SSMHL Peewee Division with zero points.
The Sherring Gold Terrier first period offensive explosion started when William Hauber scored his first goal of the season via the powerplay to make it 1-0 Yorkton just over three minutes into the game.
Mitchel Madsen doubled the Yorkton lead just over two minutes later when he put his fifth of the season past Mils netminder Aiden Elmy to make it 2-0 for the home side.
However the two goal lead was short lived as Melville's Payton Kostyshyn cut the Terrier lead in half two minutes later when his shot eluded Kael DePape and found the back of the Terrier net.
Rhys Maksimow restored the Terrier two goal advantage with 8:07 remaining in the period with his second goal of the campaign. Then, a mere 45 seconds later, Ryder Korczak's third of the season made it 4-1 Yorkton.
Melville would get to within two goals on a Josh Clegget marker before the end of the period, but after 20 minutes it was 4-2 for Yorkton.
A scoreless second period saw the two teams trade chances but no goals as the scored remained 4-2 after two periods.
It looked as if the score would remain 4-2 for the rest of the game, however Yorkton's Tony Roebuck made sure that was not the case, deftly redirecting a Josh Herman shot up and over Elmy to make it 5-2 Yorkton and round out the scoring for both teams on the day.
Following the game Sherring Gold Terrier head coach Ryan Hoffman acknowledged the quick start his team got off to; something that they had struggled to do in their previous games this season. "Well we came out real strong in the first period," offered Hoffman, continuing, "We've had some slower starts I think this year but we kind of knew Melville hadn't played a game in a little while so we wanted to try and jump on them right off the bat.
"A four goal first period is proof we did a good job doing that."
But while the first period was exceptional, the second period was not. "The second period, we didn't cash in on some chances. We maybe got a little frustrated and took some bad penalties so we had a chat about that in between periods," said Hoffman, adding that his netminder Kael DePape came up big on some of the penalty kills in the second period when it looked like Melville might just score. "He made some saves there when we were scrambling. Your best penalty killer has to be your goalie and he certainly did a good job in that regard."
Next up
The next action for the Yorkton Sherring Gold Terriers will be this weekend when they travel to Saskatoon for a 16-team tournament. The next league action for the Sherring Gold Terriers won't be until the weekend of November 22 and 23 when they visit the Weyburn Youngfellow Wings in a rematch of last year's SSMHL Peewee playoff final.
