The Weyburn Red Wings are off to the SJHL quarterfinals. They advanced with a 3-2 overtime win over the Melville Millionaires Wednesday night, in front of a boisterous home crowd at Crescent Point Place.

The SJHL’s rookie of the year, Cade Kowalski, scored the game-winner before overtime was six minutes old. It was his second goal of the game after he had scored in the third period to give the Red Wings the lead.

“Really, I just got the puck from (Cole) Woodliffe, a nice chip off the boards, went down, saw I had a little room to cut to the middle, then shot it on net,” Kowalski said, describing the game winner.

“It was a great game, I think. Anybody who was here was well entertained,” said Red Wings head coach Wes Rudy. “It was a great series. Got to give Melville credit. They played us really, really hard all series and pushed us to the brink.”

The Wings were the first on the board, scoring in the second period after the two teams played a scoreless opening frame for the second night in a row. It would be Dexter Robinson, who put a wrist shot from just inside the blue line over the right shoulder of Melville goaltender Colby Entz. The assists on the goal went to Ty Brown and Connor Pyne.

Just 1:15 into the third period, the Millionaires would reply. The puck deflected off of the stick of Isaac Embree up, and over the shoulder of Arik Weersink.

Weyburn didn’t waste much time to get the lead back. Kowalski wired a wrist shot past Entz as he crossed over the blue line, making it 2-1 Weyburn with 17:55 left on the clock in the third.

Melville would tie it up, though. Aidan Steinke fired on goal with a similar shot to the one by Kowalski past Weersink with just over five minutes remaining. The goal would force overtime for the second time in the three-game series.

In the locker room before the overtime period, Red Wings captain Mike Eskra said the team as a whole was focused.

“Our main motto before the game was that there was going to be a handshake at the end of the game, no matter what, and we wanted to be on the winning side, and we did it,” he said after the game.

In overtime, Kowalski scored the game-winner, assisted by Cole Woodliffe and Ben Hiltz, advancing the Wings to the quarterfinals.

Weyburn will now prepare for the Battlefords North Stars, the number two ranked team in the league. The first game will be Friday night in North Battleford. The puck drops on the game at 7:30 p.m. We will have all the action on Red Wing Radio, K106, starting with the pregame show at 7:20 p.m.