Salmon Kings give fans something to cheer about
Victoria 4 Vegas 3
Cleve Dheensaw, Times Colonist
Published: Sunday, October 28, 2007

Elvis belted out Viva Las Vegas! from the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre speakers last night as the crowd filed out. Ironically, the playing of that song usually denotes a Las Vegas Wranglers goal at the Orleans Casino Arena when the ECHL team is at home.

But on this night, it was played post-game to herald a 4-3 Salmon Kings victory as the home team sent the visitors back to the Strip with their first loss of the season.

The Salmon Kings also ended the Wranglers' 17-game ECHL regular-season winning steak -- spanning the first four games of this season and the final 13 regular-season games from last season -- by taking a 4-1 lead over the Calgary Flames' farm team before hanging on for dear life before 3,675 loud and appreciative fans.

Wes Goldie, a 41-goal scorer last season, was up to his old tricks -- as in hat-tricks. The slippery forward out of the Owen Sound Platers of the OHL, notched three goals and the Salmon Kings needed every one of them as the wily Wranglers rallied from a three-goal deficit late in the third to almost steal the deal.

"Sometimes you get a bunch of chances and they don't go in, but tonight I got the bounces," said Goldie.

"That was a big two points for us. It's great to get our second win under our belts. We worked hard for most of the night but then had a few lapses, especially at the end, and that almost cost us. But it turned out OK. Hitting the twine is the best feeling in hockey. You get the blood going and the fans going and there's no better feeling in our sport than that."

Victoria improved to 2-2 with the win.

Rookie defenceman Dylan Yeo, under contract to the Manitoba Moose of the AHL, scored his first goal as a pro with a shot from the blue line that floated over Vegas goaltender John Curry's glove at 16:54 of the first to give Victoria a 1-0 lead.

But Vegas's unrelenting second-period pressure finally paid off when former Rangers first-round draft pick Peter Ferarro scored at 12:39 to tie the game 1-1. Victoria then caught a break on a Vegas powerplay when the always-opportunistic Goldie blocked a point shot and found the puck sliding perfectly toward the Wranglers zone with no one between him and the goal. He made no mistake in notching an unassisted short-handed goal that made it 2-1 at 16:27 of the second.

"Sometimes it bounces off your shin pad and goes off into the boards or something, but this one came off the shin pads and rolled out just nicely in front of me and you have the point-man beat in those situations."

Goldie added a pure goal-scorer's marker, conjuring something seemingly out of thin air at 5:21 of the third period, by taking a Kiel McLeod face-off win and wristing the puck into the net from an acute angle before Curry even had time to think, never mind react.

Goldie then made it 4-1 at 13:20 of the third period by completing the natural hat-trick by taking a lovely pass from Milan Gajic on a two-man advantage. All Goldie had to do was pop it into the gaping net for his fourth goal of the season as Curry had come out to meet Gajic.