And if the Prince Rupert Rampage have designs on making a run for the title this year, they are going to have to find a way through the Terrace River Kings.
For the third game in a row, the Rhinos found the River Kings to be a challenge with Saturday's road trip to Terrace delivering a stinging 7-2 defeat in a rough and nasty affair at the Terrace Ice Arena.
The River Kings delivered the first hints of what was to come as they jumped out to an early two goal lead in the first twenty minutes of play, with goals at the eight and nineteen minute mark of the opening frame.
Period Two proved to be the pivotal point of the northwest rivalry match up, as the River Kings picked up an additional four goals before the twenty minutes had expired, holding a 3-0 lead before the Rampage finally found their mark at the 3:31 point of the period.
The two Rampage goals of period two would mark all of their scoring on the night, the first scoring play finding Braydon Horcoff the marker making for his second of the season, with assists going to Jacob Santurbano and Jared Meers.
A late second period goal from Cole Atchison, his fourth of the year, asssited by Santurbano again at near the eighteen minute point offered some resistance to the River Kings, but as the night would play out that would be the last of the scoring plays for the Rupert boys on the evening.
Terrace would pick up one final goal in the early point of the third period to make for the final 7-2 result, with Rampage goaltender Devin Gerrits facing down the River Kings for the remainder of the final frame. By the time his night would be complete Gerrits had faced 44 shots from the Terrace offence, while Patrick Leal in the River King net only saw 28 shots directed his way from Ramapge playmakers.
The first two period proved to be the roughest of the night, with a pair of Fighting majors and misconducts assessed to Ben Reinbolt and Tyler Halliday for the Rampage, the remainder of the penalty parade made up of a range of minor offences.
By the end of the game the Rampage had served 27 minutes of penalty time on 8 infractions, while the River Kings had their angry on for the home crowd, with 35 minutes of penance required in the penalty box for their 12 infractions.
The need for work on Special teams once again was highlighted by those statistics, with Prince Rupert continuing to struggle on their power play opportunities, going 0 for 9 for the man advantage chances that were provided on the night.
The full look at the summary from Saturday can be found here.
Saturday night's match up was the last the Rampage will see of the River Kings until the playoffs, with Terrace having secured a 3-1 record over the four games between the two teams on this years CIHL regular season schedule.
Up next for the Ramapge is a return to the friendly confines of the Jim, as the team finally gets a home ice date following a couple of weeks of highway travel that took them deep into the Cariboo.Saturday night the Smithers Steelheads are in town, making for what will be a battle for third place, with the Steelheads currently one point ahead of Prince Rupert, with Smithers holding a game in hand.
Puck drop Saturday is 7 PM at the Civic Centre.
Prince Rupert heads into the weekend with a record of 5, 4 and 1, a look back at their results to this point can be found here, while our archive of Rampage and CIHL news is available here.
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