The Sherwood Park Crusaders went 2-1 over the course of the week, allowing themselves to rocket from fourth to second place in the Alberta Junior Hockey League North Division.
Last Friday’s game against the Calgary Mustangs (6-5-1) held bad tidings for the local Cru (8-4-0), as the Crusaders were down 3-1 early into the third.
A scoreless first period led to a mid-second-period Mustangs goal to start the stampede towards what looked like a Crusader defeat.
Carter Page scored early in the third for the Crusaders to tie things up at 1-1, but two Calgary goals in 30 seconds left a grim sight to be seen.
That was when the Crusaders rallied.
Three consecutive Park goals came from Stefan Bazar, Danny Smith and Dillon Massie to give the local boys the 4-3 lead before Calgary scored once more late in the third, sending the game into overtime.
The extra period was useless in determining a winner, sending the game to a shootout.
“It’s just the way the game works,” Crusader head coach and general manager Tim Fragle said. “It’s a crazy game sometimes. I thought, in the second period, if we scored on some of our chances, we would have had the lead going into the third instead of coming from behind. It showed good character. You have every reason to quite when you’re down 3-1 but we ended up scoring and forcing the game into a shootout, and we won the game in the shootout.”