Rampage take a road loss in Smithers visit

The four hour trek down highway Sixteen this weekend didn't deliver the result that the Prince Rupert Rampage had been hoping for, with the CIHL scoreboard finding the Rhinos on the wrong end of a 6-2 final from the Pond in Smithers Saturday night.

Prince Rupert got on the score sheet first and early on in the game as Tyler Halliday picked up the ice breaker on the scoresheet, with Braydon Horcoff and Marcus Atchison grabbing the assists at 1:35 of the opening frame.

However, the Rampage wouldn't find the net again until the late stages of the third period, with the Steelheads taking the momentum and making the most of their own scoring opportunities. By the time the full sixty minutes had been played, the Steelheads had paced themselves nicely to the victory, with two goals in the first, two in the second and two more in the final period on the day.


The final Rampage points on the night came just after the 17 minute mark, when Tyler Ostrom found some twine, that scoring play saw Braydon Horcoff pick up his second point on the night with an assist, Dave Long also got a mark in the A column on the play.

Compared to their match up with Terrace of a few weeks ago, this weekend was a relatively tame affair with only 12 minutes of infractions on six penalties assessed to the Rampage squad.

For their part, Smithers sat out twenty minutes in the box on six infractions.

Brent Roth had a busy time of it in the Rupert nets facing 37 shots on the night, while the Rampage directed 29 shots towards David Little in the Smithers net.

You can review the score sheet from Saturday night here.

And while the trip marks a mark in the Loss column for the Rampage and drops the team into fourth place in the CIHL standings, the Prince Rupert team had a better weekend than the Kitimat Ice Demons, who have yet to claim a victory in 2016-17.

Kitimat was on the always challenging Cariboo tour and that journey made for a long trip home, as the Ice Demons dropped a 10-0 decision to Williams Lake on Saturday night. 

A trip back up the highway on Sunday afternoon took them into Quesnel  and while they finally found some offence, the Kitimat team still took a 9-4 loss at the hands of the Kangaroos.

Those same Kangaroos will be hitting the road this week to take on the Rampage at the Jim Ciccone Civic Centre, as the next home game for the Rhinos takes place this Saturday night with a 7 PM puck drop.

After hitting a bit of a losing skid over the last two games, the home side should be more than motivated to return to the winning side when Quesnel pulls into town.

More items of note on the CIHL can be found on our archive page here.

Results and box scores from Rampage games can be found on our Results page.