By Nathan Kanter

North Stars fall in OT to Red Wings

Jan 13, 2017 | 9:48 PM

The North Stars may have outshot the Red Wings 44-31 in Friday’s home game, but they fell 2-1 in overtime after Weyburn outplayed them defensively and outmuscled them in the dirty areas.

Weyburn captain Mike Eskra played hero in the extra frame, after he walked into the high slot and wristed a shot past Joel Gryzbowski blocker side.

“It was a pretty soft effort to be honest with you,” North Stars head coach Nate Bedford said after the loss, which halted the North Stars six-game winning streak. “We know what Weyburn is going to do every game – they’re going to play well defensively, they’re going to frustrate you and you beat them by being tougher than them. I dont think our last two games we’ve been overly tough.

“I just think it’s a team that thinks they’re entitled. We’re in first place by a lot and we’re entitled to win games like that I guess without working. We got what we deserved, that’s for sure.”

The overtime loss was the first for the North Stars this season, as their record now falls to 33-7-1-0.

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The big storyline was shot blocking, with Weyburn managing to get in the way of shot after shot for the full 64 minutes, while Battlefords wasn’t quite up to snuff in that department.

“You’ve got to give kudos to them for blocking shots. It’s not fun blocking shots,” Bedford said. “I think we probably had, what, four or five [blocked shots]? They had four or five in the first five minutes. It’s about wanting to block shots and they really wanted to block shots  – so good for them. I think from our perspective, get your head up, find a way to get the puck through no matter how you do it. We talked about it in between periods – both periods – and it didn’t matter. I might as well have been speaking Spanish.

“It’s almost as if we were trying to do it.”

The other plus for Weyburn was goaltending, although it wasn’t all good news.

Goaltender Carter Phair played tremendous, but was forced to leave the game at the beginning of the third period after MacGregor Sincalir was knocked hard into him by a Weyburn defender. Phair took a few minutes to get to his feet and had to be helped off the ice. He stopped all 27 shots he had faced up to that point and was clearly in no shape to try to make a return. The only penalty called on the play was Weyburn for cross-checking Sincalir from behind.

Coming in relief for Weyburn was Shaun Fleming, who stopped 16 of 17 shots for the win, his fifth of the year.

“I’m not real happy witht the fact that our goalie got run and we were called with an interference call on their goalie earlier in the game,” Red Wings head coach Wes Rudy said. “That aside, Shaun Fleming has been great for us. He has flat out won us several hockey games this year and I don’t expect it to be any different.”

Sinclair was later challenged to a fight by Tyran Brown, when Brown went after Sincalir immediately following a neutral zone faceoff and a quick bout ensued.

“Who knows [what happened],” Bedford said when asked what he saw after it appeared Sinclair was simply jumped off the draw. “I know that their bench was looking at me like I had sent my player to go over and run over their goalie – that’s certainly not the case. I would never do that. And anybody that knows Sinclair and his character knows that he didn’t do it intentionally.”

The game was forced to overtime because of one goal from each side: Layne Young had a power play marker to tie the game early in the third and Carson Rose opened the scoring for the visitors early in the second.

The extra frame – now 3-on-3 – saw tremendous chances both ways, including Downs dazzling with a 1-on-1 move, but unfortunately he couldn’t finish.

Bedford said the key to overtime is to continue to play as a team.

“Don’t be selfish,” Bedford said. “You’ve got so much with only six guys out there – I think when you try to push things or make things happen, I think you get in trouble.

“I dont mind [3-on-3]…but I dont know if it’s good for the game. I dont know if I’d say that. But fans enjoy it and at the end of the day that’s all that matters. Unfortunately it didn’t work out for us today.”

As for the rematch tomorrow, Bedford didn’t offer much by way of a gameplan or optimism.

“I think Weyburn is going to beat us every time. I think they’re willing to work harder than us and we’re not willing to get to dicy areas against them,” he said. “We like to play a little bit on the outisde and shoot top corner and stuff like that – we’re not going to beat a team like this. Ive got to do a better job of getting guys on the ice at the right time. I certainly didn’t do a very good job of that. A lot of it is to do with me. When guys aren’t going to hard areas, I’ve got to do a better job of making those in game adjustments as opposed to make people happy and pat the back of your superstars. It obviously doesn’t work.”

The North Stars rematch with Weyburn is Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Civic Centre.

CJNB/CJNS will have all the action with the Ultra Print pre-game show hitting the airwaves at 7:15 p.m.