Facing a four-game losing streak, 16-year-old Adam Lowry stepped up and scored a pair of third period goals, including his first Western Hockey League game winner, in a 4-1 win for the Swift Current Broncos over the visiting Medicine Hat Tigers.
Lowry netted his 13th goal of the season 5:10 into the third period to break a 1-1 tie. 5:09 later he added an insurance marker, his 14th goal, on a two-on-one pass from linemate Dillon Wagner that he tipped past Deven Dubyk.
The Broncos were playing their fourth game in five nights against four of the top five teams in the Eastern Conference. The Broncos had earned only one point in a shootout loss over the first three games and Lowry said that this game was almost a must-win situation.
"It was huge. We knew we couldn't take just one point out of eight. We knew we had to come in here, put in a full sixty minutes, and get those two points. Right now we are in tough battling with Prince Albert and Moose Jaw for the final few playoff spots and we knew these points would be huge.
Broncos sniper Cody Eakin scored his 40th goal on a soft, knuckling shot from the half boards with only two seconds remaining in the first period to open the scoring for the Broncos. He added his WHL leading 41st with 4:06 left in the game to close the scoring.
Zdenek Okal, with his ninth goal, scored the lone Tigers' marker at the 15:43 mark of the second period as the slumping Tigers lost for the fifth time in the past six games.
Morgan Clark was solid in goal for the Broncos as he made 23 saves to improve to 18-13-0-2. Dubyk, the Tigers backup goaltender behind Tyler Bunz, fell to 7-4-0-2 with 21 saves on 25 shots.
The Broncos moved into the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference with the win as they improved to 29-27-0-4, one point ahead of the Prince Albert Raiders who hold two games in hand.
"Right now we just have to focus on what we are doing and start winning games just to help ourselves out and hopefully we can get a little bit of help along the way," said Lowry when asked how much the team is scoreboard watching. "We can't be focused on what the other teams are doing, we have to be focused on winning our own games."
The Tigers remain fifth with a 33-20-3-5 record as the season series between the two teams came to an end with two wins apiece.
The Broncos will be in Cranbrook on Tuesday to face the Kootenay Ice, who are one of the league hottest teams and 18-7-2-1 at home this season.
"They are definitely one of the hottest teams, I think they have lost only two of their last 20 games and they are a real good team at home," explained Lowry. " We are just going to have to play a solid road game, stick to our systems, get the puck in deep, get pucks on net, and hopefully we can pull out another win like we did tonight."
