The Wheatland Kings were back on the ice on Sunday in Coaldale as they took on the Copperheads. As the Kings made it three wins in a row coach Doug Raycroft was happy with the result.

"It was a pretty hard fought game a lot of back and forth and a very physical game, our goaltending was great Rhett Harten played an excellent game for us."

Raycroft said the team is feeling good after getting their third win in a row but says there is still a lot of work to be done.

"We've still got some stuff to work on in our own end, we're giving up some goals and some leads we let slip away, but I do think we are trending in the right direction." 

On Sunday in the first period Phillip Raycroft got the first goal of the night at the end of the first the score was tied 1-1, there was no scoring in the second period, and in the third Brandon McGillivray got his first goal of the season to tie the game at 2.  

The Copperheads went ahead with just over 12 minutes to go and Kobe Gosling for the Kings answered with his fifth goal of the season tying the game at 3-3. 

The Kings headed into a shootout and Phillip Raycroft came through scoring the only goal for the Kings securing them a 4-3 win. 

There were some focus and discipline issues on the ice at the start of the season explained Raycroft where players were taking bad penalties. Over the past few games, he said that he has definitely seen an improvement in that area but like everything else, the work never stops. 

"There's been a few undisciplined penalties and we've been pretty clear with the players that you take an undisciplined penalty you're going to be sitting on the bench and players don't like to lose ice time. We don't bench them forever, but we do expect them to be team first and anything that's done out of lack of discipline we just don't tolerate as a team, so it's been a little bit better."

Sunday saw the Kings in the penalty box three times during regulation play and once in overtime, which resulted in Coaldale scoring two powerplay goals, one in the first and one in the third. 

Raycroft explained that coming up in the next couple of weeks the team will need to cut their roster down to 23 players from the current 25 they have as per league rules. 

"So there will be some tough decisions here in the next little while when we do have to cut a couple of the players.  We feel like all the players we have with the team right now are good, we're giving everybody a chance."

Coming into the head coach role part way through a season is not something that Raycroft has done as a coach before but he believes in this team and said that they are working on every detail to get to where he knows they can be in this league. 

"We started putting goals in place for each game that we need to do to be successful. So when we're not doing them,  we bring it up with them, and then when we are successful you know it shows with those statistics too."

Raycroft said the team is showing a lot more consistency and focus over the past few weeks, and they cannot let up as they will be coming up against some of the tougher teams in the league in the coming weeks. 

The Kings will be looking to make it four in a row at home this weekend as they are set to take on the Airdrie Techmantion Thunder Saturday, November 19th, game time is 8 pm.