Facing his former team for the first time this season, Brock Cummings triggered the first celebration and had the last laugh.
Given his first opportunity to make the Cowichan Valley Capitals feel unwelcome in a BC Hockey League arena since they traded him to the Prince George Spruce Kings in June, the 19-year-old centre from Mississauga, Ont., made the most of his time on the ice against his old buddies.
Cummings opened the scoring and drew his second assist of the night on Ethan Montroy game winner, 7:43 into overtime Friday, to complete a 6-5 victory over the Capitals in front of a Kopar Memorial Arena crowd of 1,087.
The win pulled the eighth-place Spruce Kings (6-8-2-1) into a tie in points in the BCHL Interior Conference standings with the seventh-place Capitals (7-8-1-0) with a chance to pull ahead of the Caps in the rematch Saturday (6 p.m. start).
The Kings burst out to a 3-0 lead with goals from Cummings, Will Moore and Skogan Schrott before the game was 12 minutes old. Schrott’s goal came on a Prince George power play and that set the tone for the Caps, who responded with three straight power-play goals from Camden Bajzer, Luca Primerano (the player the Kings gave up to acquire Cummings) and Carter Streek.
The second period was another goalfest with each team scoring twice, all within a 77-second span. Brogan McNeil started it at 12:23 and Streek tied it up 19 seconds later. Seventeen seconds after that, McNeil had his second goal of the game and Caps shooter Ben Portner made it 5-5 at the 13:40 mark.
And that’s how it stayed in a scoreless third period, despite the Spruce Kings peppering goalie Alexei Noskov with 13 shots. Ryder Green, who came in to replace Kings starter Carter Wishart after Portner scored, had a lonely 20 minutes, facing just three shots in the third.
The Kings had the lion’s share of overtime chances, outshooting their opponents 5-1 and 39-28 in the game.
The Kings are now on a two-game winning streak for the first time since September when they won their first two games of the season.
