A goaltending battle for the ages at the Whitney Forum on Saturday night as the Klippers snapped the Bombers three game winning streak at home with a 2-1 Shoot out win.

 

Kindersley's Justen Close was incredible stopping 49 out of 50 Bomber shots including 8 in OT and all 3 in the shootout to pick up the victory. Not to be out done was the Bombers Brenden Newton who stopped 46 out of 47 Kindersley shots including a couple of nice break away saves in the second period.

 

Newton continues to lead the league in g.a.a at 1.53 and .952 save%. I was very surprised to see that Close only had a .896 save % coming into the game on Saturday as this was as good a goaltending performance I have seen in the last 10 years.

 

The Klippers opened up the scoring just 23 seconds into the second period when Jordan Funk was left all alone in front of Brenden Newton and re-directed a back hand past Newton for his fourth of the year.

 

It looked like that may be enough the way that Close was playing, but the Bombers kept pressing and finally got rewarded late in the third when Rutledge was able to bury a nice shot from the point through traffic to tie the game with just over 6 minutes remaining.

 

That is all the offense both teams could muster through 60 minutes and 3 on 3 OT settled nothing, and the Bombers did get a power play and hit the post and cross bar and totally dominated pretty much the entire 5 minutes but could not get another puck past Close.

 

After Close stopped all 3 Bombers in the shoot out, Josh Fletcher the third shooter for Kindersley came in over the blue line and fired a beautiful shot over the right shoulder of Brenden Newton to steal the win for the Klippers. You could tell that Newton wasn't expecting Fletcher to shoot that quickly and didn't really seem set for the shot.

 

Through 9 games the Bombers only have one regulation loss and after the weekend sport a record of: 5-1-0-3 and trail division leading Melfort by 4 points with a game in hand. Melfort lost to both Weyburn and Estevan on the weekend.

 

Kindersley had a good road trip going 3-1 with 2 wins over Laronge earlier in the week and are: 5-4-1 and are tied with Battleford for the Olumpic Buildings Division lead.

 

Flin Flon will get a couple days rest before embarking on a 4 game in 5 night road trip starting in Humboldt Wednesday, Notre Dame Thursday , day off Friday, before wrapping it up in Weyburn Saturday and Estevan Sunday.

 

Mike Stackhouse will broadcast Saturday and Sunday's games here on 102.9 CFAR and flinflononline.com. Saturday will be an 8:30 MB start time with a 7PM faceoff on Sunday.