Quake, Victory provide weekend of thrills

After six games against each other this season, it’s pretty fair to say the Yellowstone Quake and Vancouver Victory are about as evenly matched as two hockey teams can be. That was fully evidenced during a three-game series at Cody’s Riley Arena this past weekend.

The Quake fell 4-2 in an opening contest that saw Vancouver score into an empty net in the waning seconds to provide the final two-goal margin of victory. Yellowstone recovered the following night, picking up a 4-3 victory after extending the game into a shootout. Sunday’s finale could easily have gone down a similar path, but tough defense in the final minutes preserved a 5-4 Quake win.

By taking the series, the Quake have moved into a third-place tie with the Victory in the NORPAC standings.

“Every game with them pretty much has gone to the wire,” said Quake coach Joe Cardarelli, whose team has taken Vancouver to overtime twice and seen three of the other four games go into the final 60 seconds with one-goal margins on the scoreboard.

Matthew Schulz was the hero of Saturday night’s shootout victory. After scoring the game-tying goal with just over six minutes to play, Schulz slipped the game-clinching shot into net on the fifth round of the shootout, beating the Vancouver goalie to his left to bring his Quake teammates over the boards in a mid-ice victory celebration.

Drew Parus and Alex Johansons had also slipped pucks to the left of the goalie to give the Quake an early shootout lead, but Vancouver drew level as Zachary Tuchklaper and Nathan Morris were each denied trying to tuck the puck high and right.

Quake goalie Dom DeGuiseppi steered away three of Vancouver’s five attempts in the extra period, as well as 30 of 33 regulation shots on net, to pick up the win.

Travis Momon and Johansons had the other regulation shots for the Quake, who trailed by a 3-1 count well into the third period.

“We played with more intensity in the third period, and we paid a little more attention to who we had on the ice,” Cardarelli said. “Vancouver has three very distinct lines, with the first line accounting for more than half their scoring. We had some set things we wanted to do against each of those lines and we executed well in that last period and overtime to limit them.”

Schulz continued his hot play into Sunday, scoring two goals for the Quake in their 5-4 win. Schulz’s first goal beat the first-period horn by 0.1 seconds, tying the score at 1-1 going into the first intermission.

Vancouver regained the lead 19 seconds into the second period, but Tuchklaper answered four minutes later, touching off a wild spurt of action that saw three goals tallied in a 70-second window.

After Vancouver’s Avik Bordak scored to reclaim a one-goal edge for the Victory, Parus needed just eight seconds to answer for the Quake. Parus struck again with five minutes remaining in the period and Schulz netted his second goal of the night to stake Yellowstone to a 5-3 lead.

The Victory pulled within one late in the second period, but were unable to score again. Justin Yochem, making his first appearance in net since joining the Quake, steered all 10 third-period shots by Vancouver wide of goal and survived a final couple of minutes that saw the Victory throw an extra attacker into a power play to pick up the win.

In Friday’s loss, Parus picked up both Quake goals. His second pulled the team to within 3-2 with 18 minutes remaining. A 14-shot barrage in the final period failed to produce an equalizing goal for the Cody team, with the Victory finally adding an insurance point with a shot into an empty net with 32 seconds remaining in the proceedings.

The Quake travel to Whitefish, Mont., for a three-game series against the Glacier Nationals, starting this Friday. Those three games will be the team’s final contests of 2011. The team will return in January with an eight-game home stand to begin 2012.

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