It will go down as one of the most bizarre finishes to a Battlefords North Stars game in Civic Centre history.
With overtime looming Saturday night, Coby Downs fired an innocent looking long-range shot at Weyburn Red Wings netminder Shaun Fleming as the seconds wound down.
Upon hitting Fleming, the puck rose up in the air, landed behind Fleming and rolled into the net as the buzzer sounded to give the North Stars a 2-1 win.
“I was trying to get the puck deep for overtime and throwing everything on net that I could,” Downs said.
“I tried to shoot it off the boards at first, and then I decided to shoot it at their net to see what would happen.”
Once the officials signaled that the puck had gone in, Downs raced to the other end of the ice with his teammates to celebrate his good fortune.
Meanwhile, the Red Wings were pleading with the officials that the puck had gone in after time had expired, and head coach Wes Rudy was beside himself as he stormed back to the dressing room after pleading his case.
In the end, the officials put 0.8 seconds back on the clock for a final face-off, but the outcome was already decided.
“When the referees said it was in the net, I really didn’t know what to do,” Downs said.
“Everyone was reacting on the bench and in the crowd, but I didn’t know what was happening until I turned around from the blue line and saw everything that was happening around their net.”
What makes Downs’ goal more remarkable was how the final two minutes of the game played out Saturday.
Connor Logan had broken a scoreless tie on a play in front of the net, which came about after a great rush down the wing from North Stars defenceman Cody Spagrud.
The Red Wings responded on the power play with 15.6 seconds remaining, as Carson Rose was wide open in front of the net and put the puck past Taryn Kotchorek after a great feed from Braden Mellon.
“You have to give Weyburn credit as they didn’t quit after we took the lead,” North Stars head coach and general manager Nate Bedford said. “It was two teams that really wanted to win and really want to beat each other, and we’re starting to see a bit of a rivalry here between us, which is something that’s a lot of fun to be a part of.
“It was a bit of a fluke goal that won us the game, which was unfortunate for them, but it was a good result for us with how we persevered.”
Kotchorek made 20 saves to earn the win while Fleming turned aside 34 shots for the visitors.
Despite the tough loss, Red Wings head coach Wes Rudy was pleased with how his team played against the top team in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League.
“We dug deep and we battled hard right from the start,” Rudy said. “We have a pretty veteran group here and they understand that you don’t want to be peaking too high or falling too low with the ebbs and flows of a game.
“Our goal was to come in and take four points from the Battlefords, and although we worked hard in both games this weekend, it’s not the result that we wanted.”
The North Stars are now off until Saturday night, when they’ll take on the Notre Dame Hounds in Shellbrook as part of this year’s Hockey Day in Saskatchewan festivities.
The team will still be without the services of forwards Layne Young and McGregor Sinclair for those contests.
Young will be serving the second game of a two-game suspension after he took a boarding penalty Friday night.
Sinclair has two games left in the three games he has to sit after he was involved in a collision with Red Wings goalie Carter Phair early in the third period.
No penalty was given on the play, but Phair was forced to leave the game and was not in the lineup Saturday night.
