With two wins and a tie over the past week, the Osoyoos Coyotes have recovered from a shaky season start.
The Coyotes won both home-ice games – beating North Okanagan 5-2 last Wednesday and the Chase Heat 5-1 on Saturday.
They tied the Kelowna Chiefs 3-3 Friday night at the Rutland Arena in a game that went into two periods of overtime with no tie-breaker scored.
The big star for the Coyotes in last Wednesday’s game against the North Okanagan Knights was rookie Brandon Onstein, the younger brother of returning Coyote Connor Onstein.
Brandon Onstein scored two goals and an assist, his first points of the regular season. His second, on a power play, was the only goal of the second period.
Also scoring in the Coyotes’ 5-2 victory were Maxime Dupont, Carter Shannon and Hunter Johnson.
On Friday night, the Coyotes opened the scoring against the Kelowna Chiefs with a short-handed goal by Cameron Welch late in the first period.
Two minutes later, the Chiefs tied the score, following with two more goals in the second period.
The Coyotes went into the third period down 3-1, but Seth Kriese scored four minutes in to close the gap.
Justin Sanderson picked up his second assist of the night, with Brock Marple also assisting.
Then, with less than six minutes remaining in the third period, Levi Holz scored on a power play to tie the game.
Assists went to Carter Robinson and Judd Repole.
The Coyotes were outshot by Kelowna in the first two periods, but they seemed to get a power boost in the third period, outshooting the Chiefs 22-8.
When neither team could score in the two periods of overtime, the game ended in a 3-3 tie.
Saturday’s home game 5-1 victory over the Chase Heat allowed several Coyotes to shine.
Liam Aitken, who was back in net for all three of last week’s games, made 30 saves in 31 shots on goal.
Repole was named the game’s first star, scoring one goal, but he got three assists for a total of four points.
Despite that being his only goal of the season, Repole leads the Coyotes in points with 14. Of those, 13 points are for assists, showing that once again this season, Repole excels at setting up goals for his line-mates.
The two Carters – Shannon and Robinson – also had a good game, getting three points each.
Shannon scored two goals in the second period and added an assist in the third.
Robinson scored the opening goal just over one minute into the game on a power play and then assisted on a second goal a few minutes later.
The Coyotes scored the only two goals in each of the first and second periods.
Repole’s power play goal early in the third period put the Coyotes ahead 5-0.
At this point, Chase pulled goalie Conor Webb and replaced him with backup goalie Matthew Ens.
Finally, with eight minutes remaining, Chase scored on a power play to end Aitken’s shutout dreams.
The five points earned in the past week give the Coyotes a total of 11 in the nine games they’ve played – putting them in the middle of the pack in the Okanagan Division.
That’s five points behind the division-leading Summerland Steam, and five points ahead of Knights, who are sitting in the bottom.
This weekend the Coyotes travel to 100 Mile House to face the Wranglers on Friday night.
They then make the long trip home to host Summerland at the Sun Bowl Arena on Saturday.
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
