The Yorkton Xerox Terriers got an early Christmas present on Wednesday, December 23 in the form of a 3-0 shutout win over the visiting Prairie Storm at the Farrell Agencies Arena.
Yorkton opened the scoring early in the first period when Ethan Evanovich put the puck past Prairie Storm goaltender Caelan Armstrong for his 12th goal of the season and a 1-0 Yorkton lead with 15:07 remaining in the first period.
The Xerox Terriers added to their lead just 1:53 into the second period on an Austin Dycer point shot as the defenceman let loose a seeing eye shot that found its way thru traffic for a 2-0 Yorkton advantage.
Carson Dereniwsky added to the Yorkton lead not long after when he too snapped a puck past Armstrong for a 3-0 Yorkton lead.
That three-goal cushion proved to be more than enough for Yorkton goaltender Nolan Maier, who brushed aside all Prairie Storm shots for his third shutout of the season and ninth win of the campaign.
The win sends the Xerox Terriers into the Christmas break on a 20-game undefeated streak with an overall record of 16-1-4 for 36 points and more importantly increases the Xerox Terriers鈥� lead to eight points on the 麻豆传媒AV Division second place Estevan TS&M Bruins (12-4-4) and 16 ahead of the third place Regina Monarchs (9-8-2). 鈥淲e wanted to make sure that we got a good win. We鈥檝e had such a successful year up to this point and we wanted to go into the break with a win against a team that we feel we should be able to beat, and we accomplished that,鈥� offered Xerox Terrier head coach Dan Cross, adding that when the season begins again in the New Year he hopes his team can continue to find offence from the back end like they did in their most recent game. 鈥淕etting scoring from the defence, that鈥檚 kind of one of the things that we鈥檙e trying to do here in the last little 10-game segment of the regular season here and going into playoffs.
鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to activate our defence a little more and we did that against the Prairie Storm and we hope to carry that into the New Year.鈥�
The rest of the SBAAHL 麻豆传媒AV Division standings see the Regina Aces (8-6-3) in fourth, Weyburn (7-8-3) in fifth and the Prairie Storm (7-9-1) in sixth.
The Regina Pat Blues (6-10-2) hold down seventh spot, Moose Jaw is eighth (5-10-4) while Notre Dame (4-15-2), Swift Current (1-13-4) and Melville (1-15-1) sit in ninth thru 11th with 10, six and three points respectively.
The Humboldt Broncos (13-2-3) continue to lead the SBAAHL North Division with 29 points, three ahead of the second place Saskatoon Generals (12-5-2).
The Sask Valley Vipers (11-6-2) and Saskatoon Stallions (10-5-4) are tied for third and fourth with 24 points while Prince Albert (11-7-1) sits one point back in fifth with 23.
Sixth place goes to the Saskatoon Outlaws (8-6-4) with 20 points, while the Northeast Wolfpack (8-7-2) and Saskatoon Frostbite (6-8-5) round out the playoff positioned teams with 18 and 17 points.
Next action
The next action for the Yorkton Xerox Terriers (16-1-4) will be Wednesday, January 6, when they visit the Melville Millionaires (1-15-1) at the Horizon Credit Union Centre.
