The future of the Swift Current Broncos was on display tonight as they overcame a late blown lead to beat their rivals from Moose Jaw 4-3 in overtime.

Three of the four Swift Current goals came from 17-year-old players in a hard fought victory on the road. The victory snapped Swift Current's 12 game losing skid away from the Innovation Credit Union iPlex.



Alex Moar scored his first WHL goal finishing a give-and-go with Matthew Culling to earn the overtime win. It was Culling's second point on the night after he had given the Broncos a third period lead with his fifth goal of the season.

"Moar had really good patience and Culling has really come along," said Broncos assistant coach Scott Dutertre. "You can start to see that composure start to kick in and a little more patience with the puck. It was a really great play to end it."

Culling now has goals in four of his last five games.

"The guys that put in the work are going to be successful," Dutertre said. "He really wanted to work on shooting with speed and working on releasing the puck while his feet are moving. He spent the month of December and even back in November working on some finishing stuff... Matty really has put a lot of time into his shot and moving his feet. His offensive awareness has gotten a lot better. We tweaked his shot a little bit."



Joel Hofer put the Broncos in position to even be in the game as he stopped 29 of 30 Moose Jaw shots in the first two periods including several highlight reel stops while on the penalty kill.

"You can't take a shift off," Hofer said. "I think the biggest thing for me is not giving it up and always giving it my all. I'm glad the team could work hard in front of me and block a lot of shots."

Hofer made the biggest difference when the game was still scoreless including back-to-back penalty kills midway through the second period.

"Some of those saves he made again tonight," Dutertre . "I thought on our penalty kills as the game went along we started to ease his pain a little bit and keep them more on out of the perimeter... but in the first half of the game we're not talking about a victory if he's not in there tonight. He was unreal for us."



Swift Current opened the scoring on Carter Chorney's first goal as a Bronco midway through the second period. He drove between two Moose Jaw defenders and was able to lift his ninth goal of the season over Brodan Salmond's blocker while being hauled down.

"He found that little gap," Dutertre said. "You have to put pucks into spaces. If you have it on your stick the whole time they just whack your stick. There was just a little bit of a gap in the D and he just pushed the puck through into a certain area... and he just snapped a quick snap shot home on that."

It was only Chorney's third game with Swift Current after arriving from Spokane in the Noah King deal. The Broncos also got rookie forward Eric Houk back from an injury.

Moose Jaw answered when Jett Woo converted a deflected puck around Swift Current's crease for a 1-1 game through two periods.

Culling gave the Broncos a late lead while speeding down his off wing and snapping a puck by Salmond. Matthew Stanley's point shot then found a hole after a hard work shift by Swift Current's fourth line for a 3-1 lead.

The Warriors found a way to battle back on late goals by Brayden Tracey and Keenan Taphorn to force overtime. Stanley appeared to take a high stick right before Tracey's goal and Ian Briscoe had been tripped up moments before Taphorn's. Tough luck or not the Broncos couldn't hold the late lead and had to find a way to earn the win in overtime.

"We don't want to get to that situation," Dutertre said. "We've got to try and find ways to have sticks on pucks and get sticks into lanes. On that last goal they made a great passing play... that's a skilled play."

Swift Current has now won five of their seven overtime appearances this season.

Moose Jaw went 0 for 4 on the power play and the Broncos didn't see the ice on theirs.

The loss drops the Warriors to 17-8-5-1 and Swift Current moves up to 7-25-1-1

Swift Current was missing Finnish imports Joona Kiviniemi and Roope Pynnonen who had not yet returned from their Christmas break. Moose Jaw's Josh Brook is playing for Canada's World Junior Team coached by Warriors bench boss Tim Hunter.

The two teams meet again on Friday night in Swift Current.