Tyler Soy relished his role as the spoiler for the Victoria Royals.
The 17-year-old centre banged in a rebound 63 seconds into overtime Friday to lift the Royals to a 3-2 win over the visiting Prince George Cougars in front of a crowd of 4,244 at Save-On Foods Memorial Arena in Victoria. Soy was ideally positioned near the crease to get his stick on the puck after linemate Travis Brown was stuffed on a wraparound attempt.
With the win, the Royals (21-19-2-1) increased their hold on second pace in the B.C. Division, moving four points ahead of the Cougars (20-22-1-0), who picked up a point for their overtime loss. Each team has 29 games left in the season.
Brandon Magee, a serial Cougar-killer, scored two goals to lead the Royals.
The Royals struck first at even strength 11:23 into the first period. Former Cougar centre Alex Forsberg, in his first game for Victoria since being traded this week from the Saskatoon Blades, set up Magee for his first of the night.
The Cougars responded with consecutive shorthanded goals to take a 2-1 lead into the first intermission. Chase Witala took off on an end-to-end rush and got in alone past Victoria defenceman Jack Walker, and put the rebound behind goalie Coleman Vollrath, who made the initial save on Witala's backhand deke.
It was Witala's team-leading 23rd goal of the season.
In the final minute of the period, aggressive penalty killing from Cougars forward Jari Erricson behind the Victoria net resulted in a turnover and he passed the puck to Aaron Boyd, who buried it for his third of the season and second of the year while shorthanded.
Magee tied it with the only goal of the second period on a Victoria power play, his 13th of the season. It was Magee's 33rd point in 39 career games against the Cougars. Magee came close to ending it early in overtime when he nailed the goalpost.
Ty Edmonds made 31 stops in the Cougars nets, including a point-saver with 1.2 seconds left in regulation time. The Cougars were outshot 34-22.
The Cougar penalty-killers were kept busy, allowing one goal on seven Victoria chances. Prince George went 0-for-4 on the power play.
"We came up short at the end but I thought our penalty-kill did a tremendous job tonight," said Cougars assistant coach Roman Vopat.
"We were undisciplined so we took a lot of penalties and we did a great job and scored two shorthanded goals. We didn't capitalize on [four] power play chances and I think that was a big difference at the end. If we score at least one on the power play we would have had the two points tonight."
The Cougars and Royals meet again tonight in Victoria. It will be the fourth game in five nights for Prince George and the third game in four nights for the Royals.
LOOSE PUCKS: The Cougar scratches were D Kirk Bear (lower-body injury), D Tomas Andrlik (sprained ankle), RW David Soltes (lower-body injury), RW Cal Babych (healthy), G Tavin Grant (healthy)... The Cougars have gone into overtime on only one other occasion in 43 games this season. They beat the Kamloops Blazers 3-2 in a shootout at CN Centre, Nov. 2
