Rampage take three of four points on weekend swing through Bulkley Valley

The ice conditions at the rink, were probably better than on the roads this weekend as the Prince Rupert Ramapge took to the snow covered highways of the Northwest for a pair of CIHL contests to kick start the final month of the regular season and start the push to the playoffs.

Saturday night the team was in tough agains the Wolverines as Hazelton battled the Rampage through all three regulation and then Two Overtime periods on the way to a 4-4 draw.

The score sheet and other stats related to the Saturday night game have yet to be released by the CIHL, so our update on which of the Rampage collected points on the night will come along shortly we hope.

Sunday afternoon the Rhinos were in Smithers where they dominated two of the three periods of play on the way to a 7-3 victory over the host Steelheads at the Pond.

Seeming to suffer little in the way of side effects from their extended play the night before in Hazelton, they quickly found their feet on the ice for a strong effort to wrap up their trek inland.

And while they gave up the first and last goals of the opening period, it was a four goal explosion in the middle of the first frame that set the tone for the afternoon contest as the Rampage controlled much of the play for eleven minutes.

The first period scoring by Kolton Chasse who had two goals in the period the first assisted by Jacob Santurbano, the second by Josh Cook.

Cook himself would score the fourth goal of the period with Chasse reciprocating with the assist.

Tyler Ostrom also had a first period marker with both Chasse and Cook getting the helpers.

The Ramapge picked up where they left off in the second period, with Joshua Cook completing his day's work towards a hat trick, a pair of goals at 27 seconds assisted by Chasse and an unassisted marker at 15:25 making for his final points on the day.

Graeme Lodge scored at 15:41 with an assist from Chasse, making for his sixth point in the contest,

The third period saw but one goal, that from the Steelheads to make for the final score of 7-3, in favour of the Rupertites

It was a relatively quiet day on the penalty sheet, with the teams trading off minors until the end of the third when some nasty stuff broke out, with the Ramapge's Tyler Ostrom assessed a range of minor penalties and a misconduct to bring his game to an end.

When all was recorded the Ramapge had 16 minutes assessed on four infractions, the Steelheads 4 minutes on four infractions.

Tomoki Yoshizawa was in the Ramapge nets for the win

The full score sheet for the game can be reviewed here.

Prince Rupert has a week off and then they board the bus again, this time for the always challenging journey into Cariboo country, with two games set with the Quesnel Kangaroos and Williams Lake Stampeders on January 18 & 19.

For more notes on the 2019-20 campaign see our archive page here.

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