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Cariboo Cougars have been piling up points since tough opening weekend
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The winning streak is up to 10 games, the undefeated up to 12. For the first-place Cariboo Cougars, pretty much everything is going right these days.

In the 11-team B.C. Hockey Major Midget League, the Cougars haven't lost since the first weekend of the season when they fell 5-2 and 5-3 on home ice to the Valley West Hawks. Since then, they have been nearly flawless and have ascended to the top of the standings with an 11-2-1-0 record. They are one point ahead of the second-place Hawks, who have two games in hand.

Prior to the start of the 40-game regular schedule, Cariboo head coach Tyler Brough suspected the Cougars - defending regular-season and playoff champions in the BCHMML - had the right mix of players to once again be an upper-echelon team. So far, he has been proven correct. In his view, those early losses to the Hawks were beneficial because they showed his 15- to 17-year-old Cats the importance of playing with the proper amount of composure.

"I think discipline-wise, the first weekend of the season we weren't very good - (penalties) kind of took away from our five-on-five play and allowed the other team to score a lot of power-play goals and we've corrected that," Brough said. "I think that was the first step that kind of righted the ship, if you want to put it that way. But I think our overall systems and our structure and our discipline and staying within those has been good as of late. We've kind of made a pledge since the first weekend to get better every day and the boys are working hard at practices and in games to do that."

The most recent victories for the Cougars were hard-fought ones last weekend in Trail. On Saturday, they edged the Kootenay Ice 3-2. Then, the next day, the Cats skated to a 6-4 win.

While the overall success of the Cougars has been impressive, Brough is a believer in keeping his players on an even emotional plane. He doesn't want them getting too high when things are going well or too low if they're not. In accordance with that philosophy, he himself points out that, during the win streak, the Cats have beaten some of the league's lower-tier teams. In their past eight games, they've swept past the North Island Silvertips (currently in ninth place), Thompson Blazers (10th place), South Island Royals (11th place) and the Ice (eighth place).

Individually, one of the most outstanding players for the Cougars has been goaltender Marcus Allen, who turned 17 on Monday. Currently, Allen has a 9-1-1 record and a league-leading 2.22 goals-against average.

"I can't say enough about Marcus," Brough said. "We hold him in high regard and we demand a lot from him but he hasn't let us down at all. If anything, he's done more than we've asked. He's been on a pretty good run here as of late, as well as the team, and he's a big reason for that. Anytime you have a goaltender you can trust and the team plays very confidently in front of, it's a nice thing to have."

Offensively, players like 17-year-olds Hunter Floris and Mason Richey have been key individuals for the Cougars. Floris is the league's second-leading goal-scorer (14 in 14 games) and is third in points with 21. Richey, meanwhile, is right on his teammate's heels with 20 points (eight goals, 12 assists) in 14 outings. Craig Macdonald (five goals, 17 points), Brandon Dent (nine goals, 14 points) and defenceman Brennan Malgunas (six goals, 14 points) are also among the top 20 point producers to date. Among defencemen, Malgunas is second to Hayden Hurst of the Greater Vancouver Canadians (two goals, 16 points) in league scoring.

"Brennan's been a guy I've had the pleasure of coaching for a few years now and he's gotten better every year," said Brough, who was an assistant with the Cougars for a couple years before he took over as head man from Trevor Sprague for 2017-18. "He has worked on the areas of his game that we felt kind of hindered him a little bit and he understands fully now that when he's on the ice he's dominant. He can get sucked into the other side of the game, between the whistles, a little bit too much but this year he's been awesome. He's been a leader by example and has been the guy on our back end that has set the tone game in and game out.

"In my mind, he's one of the better defencemen in the league and he's going to get a lot of looks from junior A hockey teams and maybe into the Western Hockey League. Opportunities are out there for him and he's creating that for himself."

The Cougars will look to extend their winning streak on Saturday (4 p.m., Kin 1) when they take on the fifth-place Fraser Valley Thunderbirds, who will arrive in Prince George with a 6-5-1-0 record. The teams will also play on Sunday at 10 a.m.