The Prince George Cougars know all about the peaks and valleys of a long hockey season.
Just last week they were riding a four-game winning streak when they rolled into Spokane. A 3-2 loss to the Chiefs was compounded by consecutive home-ice losses to Spokane - 5-4 on Tuesday and a 5-0 stinker on Wednesday. That's three straight defeats, not how the Cougars had it planned.
Now that they're into the Christmas break, they've got a full week to think about how they're going to end that slump when they get back on the ice to take on the Victoria Royals in Victoria on Dec. 27.
The Cougars (17-18-0-0) fell a few wins short of head coach Mark Holick's goal of 20 wins before Christmas but they're still only three points behind Victoria for second place in the B.C. Division. The third-place Cougars also have two games in hand over Victoria and they've proven they can win in some tough places, having beaten Kelowna and Everett in their own barns earlier this month. While they've shown glimpses of being a solid playoff contender, the Cougars' lack of consistency has been a persistent thorn that's hurt their position in the standings.
The goaltending of Ty Edmonds, which was so good for the Cougars on the road and led to their four-game streak, wasn't bad against the Chiefs, but it wasn't good enough to win. Holick made that point clear to Edmonds when he replaced him with Tavin Grant during both Spokane games.
"The Everett game was outstanding and I thought we played well enough to win in Spokane and I thought we deserved better," Holick said. "We had a lot of passengers in the game Tuesday and I didn't like the fact a lot of our older guys took the night off.
"We were a little better on Wednesday. We had 83 shots on net [in the two games] and only scored four goals, so we were obviously snakebitten, and I didn't like our goaltending on both nights. I don't think we gave up double-digit scoring chances and we gave up five goals [Wednesday]. That's not good enough at this level."
The Cougars go into the break reasonably healthy. Forward Cal Babych has an undetermined injury and defenceman Josh Anderson will be out for a few more weeks with a wrist injury.
