The Yorkton Harvest dropped the opening game of the preseason Saturday when the visiting Regina Pat Canadians came to town and scored twice in the third period to escape with a 3-1 win.

Yorkton opened the scoring at the 13:26 mark of the first period when Carson Cayer tallied from Logan Karakochuk.

Regina answered back in the second period when Jaxon Debert evened the score at 1-1. Joshua Rieger made it 2-1 visitors late in the third period and when Yorkton pulled their goaltender, Owen Sillinger found the empty net with 25 seconds left on the clock.

Spencer Bomboir split the goaltending duties with Carson Bogdan. Bomboir stopped all 25 shots he faced. Bogdan stopped 13 of 15.

The Harvest have only three more preseason contests remaining before they hit the ice for real at the end of the month.

On Wednesday, they host Notre Dame at the Farrell Agencies Arena, before heading out on the road to close out the exhibition on Sept. 25 in Notre Dame.

The Saskatchewan Midget AAA Hockey League is set to open in Yorkton on Sept. 29 when the Harvest host the Saskatoon Contacts in a weekend homestead, Saturday and Sunday.

Both games are scheduled for the Farrell Agencies Arena.

Head coach Jeff Odgers said he likes where his team is at despite coming off the close loss to the Regina team. They lost the game in the last minute.

“I was actually happy with the game.”

The team is finalizing the cut process and Odgers said that is going well.

One place where things are looking really well is in the net. Bomboir didn’t let anything get past him Saturday.

“He did everything we could have asked of him and more.”