RiverKings fall to Oilers, 4-3

SOUTHAVEN, Miss. – The Mississippi RiverKings fell 4-3 to the Tulsa Oilers in Sunday’s game three of the opening round best-of-five series at the DeSoto Civic Center in Southaven.  Mississippi leads the series two games to one.  Both teams traded special teams goals in the first period. Tulsa’s Michel Beausoleil opened the scoring with a power play tally at 2:21 for a 1-0 lead. Chris Richards answered with a power play rebound goal at 14:40, assisted by Chris Auger and Brennan Sarazin to tie the game at 1-1.   Mississippi took a 3-1 lead in the middle frame on goals from Louis Dumont and Patrik Levesque. Dumont’s second goal of the playoffs came at the 1:01 mark with the assists from Darrell Stoddard and Auger.  Levesque scored the series’ first short-handed goal later in the period at the 16:54 mark after Auger fed the puck to him as he was leaving the penalty box. It was Levesque’s third goal of the playoffs. Derek Landmesser also received an assist on the goal. The game went the Oilers way for the remainder of the contest. Luke Lucyk scored a power play goal with 1:46 left to go in the period to bring the Oilers within one at 3-2, heading into the final period.

Tulsa’s Braden Walls’ screen shot from the left wing at 8:06 of the third period tied the contest, and Derek Eastman scored unassisted at 13:23 for the game-winning tally.  Mississippi continued to press but couldn’t score in the final minutes of the contest, including the last minute when goaltender Alexander Pechurskiy was pulled for an extra attacker.  The RiverKings won the offensive battle on the shot count 39-30, but only scored once in five power play opportunities. Tulsa was 2-for-4 with the man advantage.  Pechurskiy took the loss for the first time in the CHL playoffs (2-1) with a 26 save effort. Trevor Cann was the winning goaltender for Tulsa, stopping 36 of 39 Mississippi shots on net.  Game four of the series will be back at Southaven’s DeSoto Civic Center on Tuesday night at 7:05 PM. Contact comments@prohockeynews.com Contact the photographer at les.stockton@prohockeynews.com