Home cooking: Pats get first win of the season in home opener

The Regina Pats got their first win of the season as they played in front of a home crowd for the first time this season.

Regina’s Parker Trottier scored two goals in the game to power the Pats to a 6-2 win over the visiting Swift Current Broncos at the Brandt Centre on Sunday afternoon.

“It was really important to get a win,” said Pats head coach David Bell, who recorded his first win as the WHL team’s bench boss. “We got a win and the power play was extremly good getting four power-play goals. I think penalty kill was the whole change in the game when we scored that short-handed goal so special teams was really, really good for us tonight.

“Overall, I’ll take the win but there’s a lot of stuff we have to address still.”

Pats forward Zach Lansard knows giving up those goals in the first period is something they have to work on.

“Never want to do that in the first period but I think we bounced back,” Lansard said.

The Pats, who wore their new blue bulldog jerseys, got out to a quick start in the game as just over seven minutes into the opening period, Parker Trottier scored his first goal of the season.

Then, with the man advantage, Liam Pue scored his first goal of the campaign to put the Pats up by two.

But the Broncos weathered the early storm and late in the period, tied things at two apiece. Sawyer Dingman scored with 2:35 remaining in the opening frame. Then 53 seconds later, Stepan Farushev beat Pats goalie Taylor Tabashniuk.

Bell said he liked how they stuck to their system early in the game but didn’t like how they devaited from it, which led to the two goals by the Broncos.

“That’s a discipline thing we have to learn to do as a team that hopefully gets leads and then we can put teams away with that third or fourth goal instead of letting them back in the game,” Bell said. “Glad we finally did it in the third but I didn’t like the second 10-minutes of the first.”

Regina grabbed the lead in the second period as Trottier scored his second of the game, this one also up a player. Swift Current head coach Travis Crickard called for video review on the goal, but it was upheld.

While short-handed, Zach Moore scored Regina’s fourth goal of the game as he provided some insurance in the third period.

The power play of the Pats was four-of-seven in the game. The penalty killers did their job in the contest as Swift Current didn’t score on any of their six power play opportunites.

“I said it to all the (penalty killers) out there. I said you guys did an amazing job and kept us in the game. They could have had as good of a power play as we did and they didn’t because our penalty kill was good and our faceoffs were good on the PK,” Trottier said. “They kind of just drove our momentum.”

Lansard also provided more insurance with Regina on the power play late in the game and then Matt Paranych added another for Regina.

The Pats are now 1-1-0-1 to begin the season and Lansard is excited about the potential the team has.

“Super offensive and we are very skilled. We are young but I think we are way better than we think we are. We just have to dial in the details and I’m super excited where this group can take us,” Lansard said.