The Vancouver Giants defeated the Seattle Thunderbirds 5-1 in a Western Hockey League game at the accesso ShoWare Center on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
Seattle (28-29-6-2) has a five-point lead on the Kamloops Blazers (26-32-5-2) for the second wild-card playoff spot in the Western Conference. Their magic number to secure the spot is one – a T-Birds’ win or a Blazers’ loss.<\/p>\n
The T-Birds travel to Kennewick to play the Tri-City Americans on Wednesday at 7:05 p.m. The Blazers host the Victoria Royals on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Vancouver took a 1-0 lead at 14:45 of the first period on Justin Sourdif’s goal. Davis Koch and Aidan Barfoot had the assists.<\/p>\n
The Giants made it 3-0 in the second period on a power-play goal by Lucas Svejkovsky at 2:29 and a goal from Alex Kannok Leipert at 7:12.<\/p>\n
Seattle cut the Giants lead to two goals at 16:33 of the second. Matthew Wedman won a faceoff in the left circle of the offensive zone where Henrik Rybinski picked it up. Rybinski took a stride a put a wrist shot on goal that beat Vancouver goalie David Tendeck under the right arm.<\/p>\n
Svejkovsky scored at 16:56 of the second to make it a 4-1 Giants lead.<\/p>\n
Dylan Plouffe scored the Giants fifth goal 43 seconds into the third period on the power play.<\/p>\n
Seattle outshot Vancouver 39-24 in the game.<\/p>\n
SCORING SUMMARY<\/strong><\/p>\n First period<\/strong> – 1, Vancouver, Sourdif 24 (Koch, Barfoot), 14:45. Penalties – Draffin, Van (hooking), 6:08. Nielsen, Van (high-sticking), 9:17.<\/p>\n Second period<\/strong> – 2, Vancouver, Svejkovsky 8 (Byram, Hines), 2:29 (pp). 3, Vancouver, Kannok Leipert 4 (Watts, Koch), 7:12. 4, Seattle, Rybinski 8 (Wedman), 15:33. 5, Vancouver, Svejkovsky 9 (Valenti), 16:56. Penalties – Wedman, Sea (high-sticking), 1:08. Bulych, Van (boarding), 11:15. Wood, Sea (holding), 19:06.<\/p>\n Third period<\/strong> – 6, Vancouver, Plouffe 7 (Watts, Koch), :43 (pp). Penalties – Kubicek, Sea (roughing), 11:55. Richards, Sea (roughing), 11:55. McNelly, Sea (roughing), 11:55. Patrician, Van (roughing), 11:55. Plouffe, Van (holding), 13:19. Wood, Sea (major-fighting), 14:09. Hines, Van (major-fighting), 14:09. Richards, Sea (unsportsmanlike conduct), 14:09. Byram, Van (unsportsmanlike conduct), 14:09. Bulych, Van (cross checking), 15:09.<\/p>\n Shots on goal<\/strong> – Seattle 15-15-9 39, Vancouver 8-7-9 24. Goalies<\/strong> – Seattle, Ross 17 shots-12 saves (14-5-1-2), Schwebius 7-7; Vancouver, Tendeck 39-38 (24-10-1-1). Power plays<\/strong> – Seattle 0-3; Vancouver 2-2. A – 5,202. Referees<\/strong> – Jeff Ingram, Brett Roeland. Linesmen<\/strong> – Mark Heier, Brett Mackey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Seattle goes for clincher when it travels to Kennewick to play the Americans on Wednesday <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":39575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-39574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39574"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39574"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=39574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}