On Lumberjack Night, Jermaine Loewen chopped down the Prince George Cougars.
Loewen, the tallest and heaviest of the bunch on the Kamloops Blazers, came up with his best axe swing of the game, standing among a forest of Cougars in front of the net. Loewen crashed the net and used the full force of his six-foot-four, 221-pound body to get to the rebound of Nolan Kneen's shot from the side and Loewen's hard backhander found the back of the net for the gamewinner with 40.9 seconds left.
Loewen's 26th goal of the season came with Ethan Browne in the box for high-sticking and it gave the Blazers a 3-2 victory.
Just before that, the Cougars had five minutes of power-play time to try to break the 2-2 deadlock midway through the third period when Tyler Ludwar went knee-on-knee with Cougars defenceman Joel Lakusta. Ludwar was handed a major penalty and was ejected from the game but the Blazers were superb on the PK, blocking shots, breaking up passes and pressuring the Cougars' pointmen.
They held the Cats to just one shot. The failure of the league's 22nd-ranked power play to do anything productive in that five-minute stretch drew the wrath of Cougars head coach Richard Matvichuk singled out veterans Lakusta, Aaron Boyd and Jared Bethune for their ineffectual play and failure to get pucks in deep and promised changes to his power-play units for tonight's rematch against the Blazers.
"Our power play was terrible," said Matvichuk. "It's a privilege to be on the power play and you have to work to be there and as a coaching staff we'll make those adjustments. You can't just have one shot on a five-minute power play, it doesn't matter who you are or what league, it's going to change the momentum on the period and that's what happened."
Just before Loewen scored, the Cougars, while shorthanded, broke in on a 2-on-1 chance but the shot from Josh Curtis was stopped by Dylan Ferguson's glove.
Friday's win at CN Centre improved the Blazers' record to 25-25-1-3, while the Cougars, last overall in the WHL Western Conference, dropped to 19-28-4-4.
In a wild start to the sixth of 10 meetings this season between the teams, three goals were scored in the first four minutes. Ryley Appelt got the Blazers on board first when he got to loose puck shot by pointman Joe Gatenby which deflected off a Cougar stick. About a minute later, Josh Maser and Ilijah Colina broke in on a 2-on-1. Maser let go a shot which hit the arm of Ferguson and dropped to the ice behind him. It was about to slide across the goal line when Colina gave it whack just to make sure for his eighth of the season.
Sixteen-year-old Kjell Kjemhus centred an all-rookie Cougars line with Liam Ryan and midget callup Brendan Boyle and was rewarded with the first goal and second point of his 18-game WHL career. Kjemhus, who joined the Cougars in January in a trade from Prince Albert, tipped a shot from defenceman Austin Crossley and it found its way through a screen in front of Ferguson to give the Cats a 2-1 lead
The Blazers tied it before the10-minute mark of the first, cashing in a 2-on-1 chance. Jackson Shepard chipped in the pass from Nick Chyzowski in over the shoulder of Taylor Gauthier, who did the splits to get across the crease as the puck slid through the crease. The teams tightened up considerably in the second period and no goals were scored in the middle frame. Kamloops doubled the Cougars in shots, 14-7, but the Cougars had the better opportunities. They were at the tail end of a power-play chance to start the period when Ethan Browne set up Colina with a tape-to-tape cross-ice pass but Colina's shot from the side of the net sailed high.
The Cougars had the pressure on midway through the period and Curtis came within a whisker of his 10th goal from point-blank range, denied by a pad save from Ferguson.
LOOSE PUCKS: The attendance was 2,901. Game time tonight is 7 p.m. The Cougars host the Red Deer Rebels on Monday, a Family Day matinee which starts at 2 p.m. The Cougars have nine homes games left this season.... Lakusta was recognized before the game as the Jim's Clothes Closet Cougar player of the month. He had two goals and 13 assists in 15 games in January. The 19-year-old native of Sherwood Park, Alta., ranks third in Cougars scoring with 30 points, including six goals. The Cougars acquired Lakusta along with a sixth-round bantam pick in a June 2014 trade with Saskatoon for the rights to 20-year-old goalie Colin Olson... The Blazers lost centre Luc Smith three minutes into the game when he missed his check and smashed his leg hard into the boards. The 19-year-old New York Rangers prospect, who ranks fifth in Blazers scoring with 16 goals and 36 points, had to be helped off the ice and did not return.
