The Rebels embarked on a six game road trip last night taking them to play two games against Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Knight before flying to Alaska to play the Fairbanks Ice Dogs for two games and then the Kenai River Brown Bears for two. But you have to take it one game at a time.
There is an old adage in baseball that if you want to win a series then you need to win the first game. Last night the Rebels did that by beating the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Knights 6-3 in the first of two back-to-night away games. It was the team’s sixth straight win.
The power play units played a key role in the win.
The Rebels’ Dean Balsamo opened the scoring with an unassisted goal at the 5:35 mark of the first period. However, despite winning only one game this season, the Knights played the Rebels tough. The Knight evened the score at 17:31 of the first period when Blake Busch scored on a power play goal with a nice setup from Paul Maust and Paul DeNaples beating Rebels goalie Darion Hanson.
But things took a drastic and sudden turn for the Knights when the second period began. Evgeny Yakovlev scored 41 second into the second period with an assist from Jerry Miettuten. It was the first of Yakovlev’s three point night, and it was the first of three power play goals for the Rebels. Andrew Zerban then scored an unassisted goal almost two minutes later to put the Rebels up 3-1. Wilkes-Barre crawled back in the period when Paul Maust scored his first of two goals on the night beating Hanson at 4:19 of the middle stanza.
The Knights started the third period slow again and the Rebels took advantage of it to blow open the game. First, it was Ryan Solomon scoring on the Rebels second power play goal with an assist from Yakovlev. Then Chris Deprez scored the Rebels second unassisted goal of the game by beating Knights goalie Andrey Svistunov almost three minutes into the final period. Yakovlev registered his third point of the night – and the Rebels third power play goal – by beating Svistunov at the halfway mark of the third period. Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s Paul Maust scored his second goal of the game (he ended up with three points) with less than two minutes left in the game.
Darion Hanson had 24 saves on 27 shots.
The Rebels look to win their seventh game in a row tonight as they play Wilkes-Barre/Scranton tonight.
Click here for the box score.
