Rangers looking to extend win streak to four games

The Kitchener Rangers have responded to their first two losses of the season with another three game win streak.

They are looking to extend that win streak to four games Friday night at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium.

In the last three games, Kitchener has scored a ton of goals. 26 to be exact. They have only let in six goals against during the same time frame. They are leading the league in goals scored with 45.

Carson Rehkopf was named OHL Player of the Week on Monday after putting up five goals and three assists last week for eight points. He added three points to his tally in Wednesday’s win against Niagara. He now sits atop the league in goals with nine tied with teammate Adrian Misaljevic and is tied for second in the league in points with 16 alongside two of his teammates, Hunter Brzustewicz and Adrian Misaljevic.

Head coach Jussi Ahokas tells the Coach’s Show that he is not surprised by the output that he has seen from Rehkopf so far.

“He has an NHL level shot for sure,” said Ahokas. “That shot is his biggest strength. He’s learning a lot. Playing a 200-foot game and when he does that well, that’s when he also produces offense. When he’s not doing the work that’s when he is having a harder time. He’s getting better day-by-day. I’m really pleased with his effort right now.”

Ahokas said in Wednesday’s win, there were some defensive lapses which he hopes gets cleaned up Friday against Owen Sound.

“Offense was good but our defensive habits weren’t there,” he said. “We weren’t defending as well as we were supposed to for the whole game. Parsons was really good in that game, the score could have been different if he didn’t play so well so we have to bounce back to our normal game again.”

The Rangers are looking to avenge their loss from Oct. 6 where the Owen Sound Attack came into the Aud, stopped the Rangers three-game win streak and stole two points for the first loss of the 2023-24 regular season.

Attack goaltender Carter George made 34 stops in that game.

Ahokas said that the Attack have really good goaltending and that the team needs to get more traffic in front of the net, especially with Carter George if they want to win.

“They have a really good goalie, so we have to get a lot of screens in front of the net. Win the net front and be there a lot tighter to get those rebounds,” said Ahokas. “Biggest thing for us is to utilize our chances and get more traffic in front of him so we can score.”

Catch the game on CityNews 570 with the Harris Law pre-game show at 6:35 p.m. with Mike Farwell and Paul Fixter.