Saturday, January 19, 2019

By Bethany Drysdale

Las Vegas – In front of another packed crowd, the UNLV Rebels put on a scoring clinic, winning 7-1 against the Utah Utes. The standing room only crowd fans brought energy Saturday night as goaltender Erik Eidissen kept a shutout going well into in the third period. The Utes came out strong in the first period matching the speed and the intensity of the Rebels lines. It was a physical match right from puck drop as there is no love lost between these two teams. Tommy Harrison paced the Rebels defense with some nice, quick shots from the blue line. Pax Malone hit a puck off the crossbar and Tristan Mayer put a bull’s eye shot off the letters of the Utes goalie. It was the Rebels John Moeller who broke through the scoring with 4:47 left in the first. Taking the shot top shelf, he was assisted by Malone. The intense play of teams resulted in a scuffle with 3:39 to go in the first, giving the Utes a 5 on 4. Even a man down the Rebels took advantage of sloppy Utah passes and scored a short-handed goal by Joe Kaszupski assisted by Cody Williams to give the Rebels a 2-0 lead going into the first intermission. At the end of 1, the Rebels had 11 shots to Utah’s 6.

Cody Williams was on fire at the start of the second period. The Rebels captain was fast and aggressive, taking several shots and barely missing. Jared Turcott was his best on home ice as well, out-skating the Utes and working the offensive zone well. With 4:29 left in the second Rebels defenseman Eric Williams went top glove side scoring the third goal of the game assisted by Kane Toriumi. The Rebels now were clearly the most dominate physical team throughout this game. They continued to frustrate the Utes, keeping them off the scoreboard and limiting their shots. At the end of 2, the shots on goal favored the Rebels 21 to Utah’s 10.

The third period picked up with the Rebels on the power play. D’Andre John put one on the back of the net on a power play, assisted by Kaszupski, going top shelf blocker side. The frustration continued for the Utes as they right back onto the penalty kill with 15:14 left. Kameron Fink added a 5th goal at 15:04, assisted by Kaszupski. UNLV was not slowing down their game and kept the hits coming putting two Rebels in the penalty box and giving the Utes an 5 on 3 advantage for two minutes. It was only then the Utes were shorthanded that Utah managed to score on Eidissen, ending his shutout with 12:53 to go in the game. Jared Turcotte was not satisfied with the score so he added to the tally with a wraparound with 8:57 to go. He was assisted by Malone and Moeller. Five minutes later the Rebels added a field goal point point to make the score 7-1, with a fast goal by Kameron Fink, assisted by Sean Plonski. The seven goals were would be more than enough to keep the Rebels unbeaten home streak going.

Join the Rebels on Friday January 25 at 7:30 pm when they take on Colorado State for a weekend doulbeheader at City National Arena. If you have not seen the Rebels play you are missing out!

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Bethany Drysdale was voted by our readers as the Best Hockey Writer here on Vegashockey.net