River Kings claim some revenge with Saturday night victory at the Jim

Revenge it is said is best served cold, but for the Terrace River Kings the waiting period was only seven days, as the Terrace squad avenged their home opener loss of  last weekend to the Rupert Rampage, by taking two points out of the Jim on Saturday night.

That loss seven days previous in Terrace clearly provided for a bit of motivation for the River Kings, as they made the return trip down highway 16 for Saturday night's date with the Rhinos and very early set the tone of play for play for the rest of the evening.

In a hard hitting and at times chippy contest, the visiting River Kings finally got into the win column for the first time in the 2016 season. With Terrace handing the Rampage their first loss on the year with a 6-3 victory at the Jim Ciccone Civic Centre, played in front of another large crowd of 763 on hand to take in the physical play between league rivals.

The game which saw a third period dominated by fights and misconducts started out with the River Kings taking much of the play to the Rampage, grabbing the first goal of the game at the 10 minute mark of the first period.

That Terrace marker was answered by Prince Rupert's Craig Munro seven minutes later, as he, Ben Towner and Hayden Long combined for the first period equalizer.

Period number two was for the most part in the favour of the River Kings, as the Terrace squad pulled into a 3-1 lead as the first forty minutes came to an end. The second frame providing for the start of the nasty on ice play with cross checking, slashing and unsportsmanlike penalties providing the Rampage a couple of power play opportunities that they could not take advantage of.

The intensity on the ice increased in the third, a carry over from period two, reaching the boiling point early on as Terrace's Luke Gordon and Kory Movald, as well as Jean-Luc Fournier all tangled shortly after the first minute had ticked on, the net result of all of that being misconducts for Movald and Gordon.

All of that drama unfolded as the River Kings picked up goal number four on the night and took what should have been a commanding 4-1 lead into the final eighteen minutes of play.

However, the scrapping and rough play seemed to provide the Rampage with a push, with the Prince Rupert side making a strong comeback bid with two quick goals five minutes apart.

The first came at the eight minute point and found Jacob Santurbano adding to his points total on the season, picking up the goal with Josh Cook gaining the assist.

Cook would follow that up with an unassisted goal at the 13 minute mark and it was Game On as the Rampage pulled to within one.

Terrace regained their two goal advantage at 18:20, putting the thought of a Rampage comeback to bed for the night, the River Kings would pick up an empty net goal forty two seconds later to seal away their victory at 6-3.

The frenzy of action of the final minutes however, once again found tempers flaring as Jean Luc Fournier and Luke Walker squared off resulting in misconducts, while Jordan Aubree also was assessed a misconduct all at the 19 minute mark of the final frame.

As the referees cleared the ice of the late combatants the final tally on the penalty front would find the River Kings assessed 58 minutes on 14 infractions, while the Rampage sat in the penalty box for 52 minutes on 11 infractions.

Despite being on the wrong end of the scoresheet, the Rampage kept River King goaltender Darren Beaulieu busy on the night firing 36 shots on the Terrace net, Devin Gerrits was tagged with the Ramapge loss with Terrace scoring five of their six goals as part of the 29 shots directed Gerrits way.

A look at the full summary from Saturday night's action can be reviewed here.

The loss drops the Rampage record to 2 and 1 in these early days of the season, but despite the loss of two points in the CIHL standings, Prince Rupert remains in Second place nipping at the skates of the Williams Lake Stampeders in first.

Next week is a light one for the CIHL schedule, as Prince Rupert joins three other teams that will get a couple of weeks off.

Only the Smithers Steelheads and Kitimat Ice Demons will take to the ice, with a Saturday night match up set for the Tamitik Arena in Kitimat.

The Rampage next see action on October 29th when the head into the Bulkey Valley for a game against the Smithers Steelheads, with the puck to drop at 7:30 at the Pond.

More notes on the Rampage and the CIHL can be found on our archive page.