The Saskatoon Blades have reeled in the Brandon Wheat Kings, tying them for second place in the W-H-L’s East Division and fourth spot in the Eastern Conference following Saturday night’s 5-1 triumph over the Wheaties at SaskTel Centre.

The Bridge City Bunch are on a four-game winning streak coming out of the Christmas break, taking both ends of a home-and-home series with Regina and following it up by doing the same to the Wheat Kings – a 3-2 triumph on New Year’s Day in Brandon and Saturday’s triumph in front of 3,918 fans. By virtue of having 22 wins, compared to the Blue and Gold’s 21, the Wheaties hold the standings tie-breaker over the Blades – and also hold a game in hand over Saskatoon. Once again, Evan Gardner was stellar to spectacular in goal for the Bridge City Bunch, stopping 35 of 36 shots. This time he got a comfortable amount of goal support. Rookie Ben Bowtell opened the scoring, ending a goal drought of 29 games and connecting for the first time since September 26 in Lethbridge. Hunter Laing notched what turned out to be the winning goal and has five tallies in as many games, head-to-head, against Brandon. Rowan Calvert (pictured) sniped a pair of power play goals, giving him a team-leading 21 goals for the season – 10 of them with the man advantage. Tyrone Sobry completed the scoring into an empty net and added an assist. Laing also chipped in a helper to go with his goal while Cooper Williams had two assists. Only Joby Baumuller’s third period power play goal kept Gardner from recording a league-leading third shutout for the season. The Blue and Gold are off until Friday when they entertain the Edmonton Oil Kings. Following are the audio highlights from CJWW’s broadcast, Post-Game Show interviews with head coach Dan Da Silva, Gardner, Calvert and Bowtell plus the official game summary courtesy the W-H-L website…..

BRANDON Goals BRANDON PLAYERS (plus) SASKATOON PLAYERS (minus) Per. Time  G-As1-As2 3rd 11:04 PP  17-9-14

SASKATOON Goals SASKATOON PLAYERS (plus) BRANDON PLAYERS (minus) Per. Time  G-As1-As2 1st 4:32  71-16-9 9 13 16 47 71 13 17 19 27 58 2nd 6:12  27-56-19 13 19 26 27 56 5 21 23 27 84 2nd 8:54 PP  23-16-26 2nd 9:51 PP  23-27-47 3rd 19:15 EN  56 9 16 23 37 56 8 13 17 19 27 58