The visiting Saskatoon Blazers claimed both games of a two game Yorkton Harvest home series at the Farrell Agencies Arena over the weekend.
Saturday night the Blazers downed the home team 4-2 on the strength of two goals in each of the first and third periods.
Connor Kortko and Stuart Symenuk each tallied one goal in the first frame to give the Blazers the lead.
With less than a minute remaining in the period, Jake McMillen pulled the Harvest within one assisted by Lynnden Pastachak and Tanner LeSann.
Following a scoreless second, Symenuk scored two more goals, including a shirt handed marker and a solo goal, for a hat trick in the game.
Josh Lees scored Yorkton second goal assisted by Dakota Odgers and Jaden Kreklewich.
Sunday afternoon the Blazers shutout the Harvest 6-0 in the second game of the weekend series with two goal scored in each of the three periods. Mitchell Shwark and Connor Gay each scored once in the first frame. Gay and Keegan Allison added two more in the second period. Gay notched his third of the game while Tanner Lischynsky added Saskatoon's sixth goal.
Yorkton Harvest head coach Jeff Odgers says the team played well for five periods. However frustration became a factor causing a breakdown of discipline which resulted in costly penalties, Odgers states.
He suggests officials are calling the game much more closely and watching for hits to the head as directed by Canadian minor hockey.
The recent rule change calls for an automatic two minute penalty for any accidental contact to a player's head. If the hit is deemed to be intentional, it's an automatic four minute penalty, Odgers explains. "We had trouble with it early in the year and had kind of gotten away from it. But today we got back to it," he suggests.
Many of the things the team needs to work on are hard to practise, like not taking penalties and scoring goals, Odgers proposes. What the Harvest will work on is shooting to score, getting traffic in front of the net, playing the rebounds right to the end, not giving up and when there's an open net, burying the puck right to the back, he lists.
