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‘Sixty-minute effort’ helps Rivermen return to win column

Langley captain Brendan Budy scores twice, leads BCHL with six goals

Coming off their first regulation defeat of the BCHL season, the Langley Rivermen produced a solid, 60-minute effort.

The Rivermen defeated the West Kelowna Warriors 5-2 on Tuesday night at the George Preston Recreation Centre, improving to 3-1-0-2 on the junior A hockey season.

“I was happy with our performance, they did a lot things well,” said Langley coach and general manager Bobby Henderson.

“We used our speed and played with tempo.”

Captain Brendan Budy led the offence with two goals and one assist and has a league leading six goals through six games.

The Rivermen were up 5-0 with less than nine minutes to play but the Warriors took advantage of some Langley penalty problems to score a pair of power-play goals.

Goaltender Braedon Fleming, the game’s first star, finished with 37 saves.

Sean Gulka and John Wojciechowski had the home side ahead 2-0 after 20 minutes, despite being out-shot 10-5.

Budy and Nicholas Ponak extended the lead to 4-0 after two periods before Budy made it 5-0 at the 9:20 mark of the third.

Ponak and Alec Capstick (two assists) both finished with two points.

With the first month of the regular season nearly in the books, Langley trails Prince George by one point for top spot in the Mainland Division.

And while Henderson is happy with his team’s start, he did caution that the Rivermen need to improve their special teams. They sit 16th out of 17 teams on the power play, converting just 9.7 per cent of their chances. Their penalty kill is in the middle of the pack, having killed 80.5 per cent of the opposing team’s man advantage opportunities. That ranks them 11th in the league.

Langley hits the island for a pair of games this weekend with a stop in Victoria on Saturday and Port Alberni on Sunday.


sports@langleytimes.com

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Langley Rivermen’s Brendan Budy throws a hit on Chilliwack Chiefs’ Sean Thomson during BCHL action at the George Preston Recreation Centre on Sept. 16 Budy had two goals and an assist in his team’s most recent game, a 5-2 win over the West Kelowna Warriors. Gary Ahuja Langley Times