Tyler Shattock (lower left) scored the winner Saturday on an odd bounce.

BY PATRICK KING
sportsnet.ca

BRANDON, Man. -- The Brandon Wheat Kings did not practice Sunday morning, but the ice was still used to investigate a problematic bounce from Saturday's game.

Late in the Moncton Wildcats and Calgary Hitmen round robin game, a strange bounce off the zamboni door resulted in the game-winning goal for the Hitmen.

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Western Hockey League vice president of hockey operations, Rick Doerksen, along with Chad Lang, hockey operations for the host committee and Marcel Patenaude, vice president of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, could not find anything irregular with the corner zamboni entrance.

"We just felt it was important to look at the strange bounce that caused such impact and take a look this morning to see if there was anything irregular," Doerksen told sportsnet.ca. "In viewing the boards, we found nothing irregular and it appears it was just those fluky bounces that happen on occasion."

Lang fired approximately two dozen pucks around the corner boards, none of which ricocheted back towards the net. Only one shot had changed its course, but wasn't significantly altered like in Saturday's game.

"Nothing came out tested," Doerksen explained. "We shot a number of pucks and certainly couldn't get a bounce like that in a 4-4 game."

Teams spoke of the lively boards at this year's site of the MasterCard Memorial Cup in Saturday's notebook. Hitmen forward Brandon Kozun believed his team held an advantage in that they knew the bounces off the boards, but even they couldn't have predicted such a bounce would be used as a springboard in a tight, close game.