February 17th, Saturday night, a shorthanded Power Dodge Estevan Bruins welcomed the SJHL powerhouse Battlefords North Stars into Affinity Place. Every game so far this season between the two teams have been hard fought, close games, and this was no exception. The Bruins were still without Johnny Witzke and Matthew Chekay, who are out with a shoulder injury and a concussion respectively, but adding to that last was Jake Fletcher who was battling an illness, and Arthur Miller who received a three game suspension from the league for a boarding call in Wednesday's night against Weyburn.

Both teams took a while to find their stride against one another until late in the first period when Jayden Davis cut into the middle of the ice and used a little stick handling in tight to sneak one passed Taryn Kotchorek to extend his point streak to four games and give the Bruins the 1-0 lead at the end of the first.

"Davis was a weapon all night long with his speed and the Manz brothers, so are younger guys, the future of the Estevan Bruins, showed that they can play with one of the best teams in the SJHL now," says head coach and GM Chris Lewgood. 

The Battlefords heavily outshot the Bruins the entire game, especially in the first where they put 16 shots on the board compared to the Bruins 6, and the volume of shots eventually caught up to the black and gold when Chaseton Braid put one passed Bo Didur to tie the game at one 15 minutes into the second. The game wouldn't stay tied for long, as TJ Irey tipped in a shot from the point three minutes later to retake the lead, which would stand through the end of the second period.

From there, the third began with more of the back and forth we had seen before when Brad Girard scored the second goal of the game for the North Stars only 1:08 into the third, but again the Bruins were quick to answer. Irey would be the one to step up again for the Bruins to retake their lead, 3-2, and solidify his spot as the game's first star.

"We knew we were going to need that sort of thing, and you'd asked me if we were going to get two goals from Irey and one from Davis tonight I would've said it's unlikely, but at the end of the day we knew we were going to have to have a guy like TJ Irey find a way to be a hero tonight and elevate his game," Lewgood added on two of his star players from the night. "TJ hasn't played with his swagger that he's probably due, and maybe after scoring two tonight he's going to have some more confidence, he's going to spend more nights playing at his ability, he was huge for us tonight."

Battlefords would battle back to tie things up one last time with a goal from their captain and league leading scorer in points, goals, and assists, Layne Young, but once again, the Bruins didn't wait long to retake the lead. Only three minutes after the goal from the North Stars leading scorer, the Bruins got a two on one when Jayden Davis brought the puck down the right side of the ice and passed the puck over to Bruins' leading scorer Zach Goberis to tuck in what would become the final score in the game, 4-3 Bruins with three minutes to go.

While that would be the final score, the Bruins weren't out of the woods yet. The North Stars pulled their goalie and started their final press to get the equalizer, pouring the shots on to really put the pressure on Didur, but the game's second star faced the onslaught head on to rack up and impressive 46 saves on 49 shots.

"A couple of them are lucky, a couple of them I'm jumping in front of, but in the end I'm just fortunate enough to have the opportunity to be in that game and as a 20 year old, I've been in juniors for five years and I mean time flies, these are the last couple games of my last season so I'm just trying to enjoy every second and I make the most of it," says Didur.

Another story coming out of the game is 15 year old defenseman Alex VonSprecken making his debut with the Bruins. While he didn't play much, he held his own against some of the top talent in the league, including a shift where he went into the corner with Layne Young and came out with the puck on his stick and the league's leading scorer laying on the ice.

When asked about his mindset going into the game, VonSprecken said, "I was kind of nervous, not knowing what to expect, but it went good and it felt real good out there."

"VonSprecken's a tremendous defender, he played really well on the defensive side of the game tonight and he made clean plays with the puck, so it's important for us to put him in situations he can succeed, and with this scattered lineup we had tonight it was hard to find those situations. I figure we could've played him more and he would've been fine."

This marks the sixth game between these two teams this year, and while the North Stars sit far ahead of the Bruins in points, neither team has an advantage in the season series, each with three wins a piece.