The Victoria Royals needed a shot in the arm Monday afternoon, playing their third game in four days with travel to Seattle and back thrown in.
The return of their star rookie and offence from their back line — all the offence — was enough of a boost to send the Royals to a 3-2 overtime victory over the Kelowna Rockets in front of 3,189 fans at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
Blue-liner Justin Kipkie finished off a nice feed from Cole Reschny on a 4-on-3 power play 2:24 into the extra frame to allow Victoria (10-8-0-1) to bounce back from a defeat in Seattle against the Thunderbirds on Saturday night.
The game-winner was Kipkie’s third goal of the game, helping the home team recover from spotting Kelowna a 2-0 lead in the first period.
Reschny, the 16-year-old first-round pick in the 2022 WHL Prospects Draft, was playing his first game for the Royals since returning from helping Team Canada Red to a fifth-place finish at the World U-17 Hockey Challenge in Summeride, P.E.I., finished with two assists Monday.
The Rockets (7-10-1), now winless in their last seven games, were rolling right along early, getting first-period goals from Tij Iginla and Gabriel Szturc to go into the intermission up 2-0.
But the tide turned early in the second when Rockets star forward Andrew Cristall, a second-round pick of the Washington Capitals in last summer’s NHL draft and who picked up an assist on the Szturc goal, was hit by Nate Miskie and had to leave the game and didn’t return.
Kipkie cut the Rockets lead in half with four minutes left in the middle period, and then tied it with five minutes left in the third period.
Twenty-year-old netminder Braden Holt stopped 23 of 25 shots to pick up the win, while 17-year-old rookie Jake Pilon finished with 21 saves in the Rockets net.
The same two teams will go at it again tonight at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre, before the Royals welcome the Lethbridge Hurricanes to town on Friday night.
