Laredo Beats Sundogs in Overtime

Three Stars:
1. Chris Stanley (LAR)
2. Alex Goupil (LAR)
3. Mark Kolanos (ARZ)

Laredo/Arizona Game Three Box Score

Prescott Valley, AZ – The Laredo Bucks needed overtime to win their second straight game in their best of seven conference finals series with the Arizona Sundogs by a final score of 4-3 on Friday night.  The win moves the Bucks in front in the series two games to one and regains home ice advantage.

The Bucks got on the board early scoring on a deflection off James Hiebert’s stick just 1:10 into the opening period.  Paul Elliott and Chris Stanley drew the assists.  The Sundogs evened things up with a goal from Mark Kolanos midway through the period.  It was his first goal of the playoffs after scoring 31 goals during the regular season.  Laredo took the lead before the end of the first period with Stanley scoring his fifth goal of the post-season.

With the score 2-1 heading into the second period, the Sundogs scored twice with Chris Bartolone and Steve Rymsha scoring goals less than two minutes apart.  The goaltenders then took over for the remainder of the period with both Marco Emond and John Ceci each making several great saves before the end of the period.  The one that got away for Emond was a long-range shot from Serge Dube that snuck through the pads tying the score at three after two periods.

Neither team found the back of the net in the third period despite the teams combining for 22 shots on goal.  Moving to overtime, the Bucks took little time taking advantage of a misplayed puck by Emond at the 1:44 mark of overtime.  Alex Goupil scored the game winning goal cleaning up a rebound in front of the net.

The Bucks outshot the Sundogs 36-32 in the game with Emond making 32 saves and Ceci earning the win making 29 saves.

The 18-game goal streak by Cory Urquhart came to an end in the defeat for the Sundogs.

Game four of the series comes Saturday night at the Tim’s Toyota Center with face-off coming at 7:05 PM (PST).