The Flin Flon Bombers and Nipawin Hawks met for the 8th and final time last night.
Nipawin is playing their best hockey in the past few seasons and had reeled off 7 wins in their last 10 games heading into last night.
The Hawks were also coming in with a 3-0 win over Flin Flon in their last meeting on February the 4th after snapping a 17 game losing skid against the Bombers.
No question about it, Nipawin is playing with renewed confidence and came out firing last night jumping out to a 3-0 lead on goals from Van Taylor, Mason Karakochuk and Konnor Watson.
The Bombers got on track when Keefe Gruener took a nice feed from Ryder Ringor, and was able to streak down the left side of the ice to beat Hawk netminder Gage Roberts with his league leading 6th short handed goal.
Guener is also second overall in the league in goals with 33 and cut the deficit to 3-1 after two.
Ashton Tait would restore the three goal lead when he scored his 11th of the year on the powerplay to make it 4 to 1 Hawks.
Flin Flon have been one of the best teams in the league and showed a lot of resiliency and were able to mount the comeback in the third.
Koen Senft (14), Liam Hunks (11) and Ryder Mucha (6) all scored in a just over an 11 minute span and were able to fight back and tie the game at 4. I thought the Bombers took it to the Hawks for much of the night and had some good chances to take the lead but Gage Roberts held them at bay.
Tied at 4 the game went to overtime , and after the Bombers squandered some good opportunities and the Hawks were able cash in on a late break away by Will Whitter who netted his 12th of the year for the winner.
This was Whitter's second break away of the extra period and he was able to bury this time.
Despite the loss Flin Flon out shot Nipawin 37 to 18 with Gage Roberts making a lot of highlight reel saves and was the difference last night. Kenny Marquart suffered the loss giving up 5 goals on 18 shots.
The Bombers will take the season series 6-1-1 and once again are locked into second spot at 37-12-4-1. The Hawks leap frog Estevan for tenth overall at 17-32-3-3 and have won 8 of their last 11 games.
Flin Flon will close out the regular season with a home and home against the Laronge Ice Wolves this weekend in what could be huge games for Laronge who are chasing down the final playoff position.
The Wolves are 5 points back of Kindersley with three games to play and would need to win all three and home that Kindersley drop their final two to Battleford. Laronge is in Melfort tonight.
Both games against the Wolves will be broadcast on 102.9 CFAR and flinflononline.com this weekend.
