Prairie Thunder muted in Allan Cup final

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This article was published 16/04/2016 (3363 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was a case of déjà vu, and not a memory the South East Prairie Thunder wanted to relive.

Again, a Steinbach-hosted Allan Cup required extra minutes to solve a championship stalemate between the local Prairie Thunder and the powerhouse Bentley Generals. Again, it was the Generals who would score last.

On this occasion, Bentley’s Carter Rigby chipped in a point shot 15:47 into a thrilling overtime to seal a 4-3 final Saturday at the T.G. Smith Centre, and the awarding of the Allan Cup for the 108th time.

The tally came after a back-and-forth overtime where somehow neither side found the twine earlier.

“We finally got one through and finally I got a piece of it,” said Rigby, “it went up over his glove and that’s all she wrote.”

This year’s title marks Bentley’s third Allan Cup, the prestigious chalice emblematic of Canadian senior hockey supremacy. The club’s first came in 2009 against the Prairie Thunder in a double overtime affair the last time Steinbach hosted the tournament.

There is a vengeance to this year’s triumph. The Generals lost to the Prairie Thunder in last year’s Allan Cup final but atoned for their mistakes on Saturday.

Bentley did not have the lead in the championship game until it mattered most—in overtime.

The opening frame had goals aplenty. Tyler Dittmer got South East on the board first when he rammed in a loose puck amid a scramble six minutes in. Each time the Generals would rally back to tie. Ten minutes in, the Prairie Thunder earned the edge again 48 seconds after they lost it to make it 2-1. The goal was credited to Dittmer after a pass bounced off him.

Bentley’s Jesse Todd evened the contest at two when he rifled a shot low at 18:09.

No goals were mustered in the second period. The frame was highlighted by a glorious passing sequence by the Prairie Thunder midway through that led to an empty net the puck sailed wide of.

Crashing the net got results for the Prairie Thunder a minute in the third period, when Del Cowan tapped in the puck to make the score 3-2. Momentum was with the hometown team, but then a power play goal credited to Ian Schultz that bounced off a Prairie Thunder in front at 9:38 necessitated another period.

The Prairie Thunder had opportunities to put this out of reach, outshooting Bentley 37-28 in regulation. South East went 1-for-7 on the power play in this contest, while Bentley went 2-for-4.

Bentley captain Don Morrison, now having hoisted the Allan Cup three times, said each title is sweeter than the last.

“It doesn’t get old, I’ll tell you that much,” Morrison said as his teammates and family members congregated on the ice to celebrate.

“I don’t even know how to explain it. I think it’s just because it’s later in my career it just means that much more,” he said.

Bentley won three prior games to qualify for the championship.

South East dispatched the Grand Falls-Windsor Cataracts 2-1 Friday night in the semis to advance to Saturday’s nationally-televised final. Prairie Thunder began the tournament with a 1-1 round-robin record and then beat Ile des Chenes 3-1 in the quarters.

South East won the Allan Cup themselves in 2015 and 2012.