The Prince George Cougars lost a close one in their Western Hockey League season debut Saturday in Kamloops, falling 5-4 to the Kamloops Blazers, the defending BC Division champion, and the Cougars took it hard.
They left the ice in a foul mood after blowing 3-1 and 4-3 lead and no doubt there were gloves tossed, sticks and water bottles hurled and swear words uttered as they made their exit from the ice at Sandman Centre.
Just what a coach likes to see from his troops after what was shaping up to be a big win suddenly slipped out of their grasp.
“Last night after the game the guys were just devastated, because you’re losing a game that you’re winning, but I love that mentality,” said Cougars head coach and general manager Mark Lamb
“It was impressive but tough for everybody, with just a week of practice (to prepare). You want to do so much and we’ll just keep moving on. It’s going to take us some time to get into any type of rhythm.”
Poor win/loss records the past three years and astute trades put the Cougars in a position to lock up early picks in successive WHL bantam drafts and management has been trumpeting the qualities of those up-and-comers as the key to building the team into a title contender. Six of those rookies dressed for Saturday’s game and three of them, all from the 2019 draft class, scored their first career WHL goals against the Blazers.
Their scoring antics started in the first period when Regina native Kyren Gronick deflected in a Jack Sander pass in over the shoulder of Kamloops goalie Dylan Garand. Then in the dying seconds of the first period, South Surrey sniper Carter MacAdams, in his first WHL game, took a pass from fellow rookie Fischer O’Brien and fired off a quick shot that found the target for a 3-1 lead to carry into the first intermission.
The Blazers played with more urgency in the second period and tied the game. Just when it was starting to look like the Cougars were starting to fade, 16-year-old Koehn Ziemmer of Mayerthorpe, Alta., took off on a partial breakaway and used shifty hands to avoided Garand’s poke check and deposited the puck in the net for the first of his junior career and a 4-3 lead.
“How about Ziemmer, the goal he scored was just high-end,” said Lamb. “Gronick had another high-end goal on the power play, that high tip. I think all our young guys had good flashes.”
Connor Zary and Logan Stankoven each scored in the third period to cinch the win Kamloops but the Cougars proved to themselves, by pushing the Blazers out of their comfort zone, they can contend with one of the best teams in the league – a shot of confidence heading into Monday’s game in Kelowna against the Victoria Royals.
“The young players showed that they have some skill and to have that many new players in a game I thought we did a lot of good things,” said Lamb. “We’ve got to really clean up some things defensively and stuff like that but there were a lot of good signs. You can see the makeup of a lot of guys on the team and the effort was there and the excitement was there.”
Lamb utilized O’Brien as a penalty-killer and the former Cariboo Cougar, whose older brother Brogan played five seasons for the WHL Cougars from 2013-18, did not look out of place in his first major junior game.
“That was probably one of the best games I’ve seen Fischer play, he was very impressive,” said Lamb. (Penalty-killing) is a role he can flourish in and it can get him some extra icetime. He’s a real smart player and he had a really good week of practice where he was quite noticeable. Now he just has to keep that consistency.”
The Blazers got some of the bugs that come with a year of inactivity out of their system the previous night in a 7-3 win over the Vancouver Giants, but the Cougars were starting from scratch, having last played a meaningful game on March 7, 2020.
“There were so many different parts of that game, we kind of weathered a storm at the start, everybody was nervous, and then we get up in the game,” said Lamb. “It’s a different game then when you’re up in a game, can you play smart enough to close it out? So there’s a game of getting there and getting the lead and it turns into another game of keeping the pressure on and holding the lead.”
That’s where the experience of the Blazers turned it in their favour. They have enough of a returning core from a team that won 41 of 63 games last season to know what it takes to win. That’s more of a work in progress for the Cougars, who had just 20 wins in 2019-20. It will take time to build that muscle memory in their brains.
The Cougars dressed just five defencemen for the game and their fatigue began to show in the late stages of the game. Veteran Majid Kaddourra sat out the first five minutes of the third period serving a fighting major and that gave additional icetime to rookie Keaton Dowhaniuk and Aiden Reeves, who played just 12 games as a WHL rookie last season.
“We were down to four D and what an experience for those guys, they were playing in situations they probably wouldn’t see,” said Lamb. “The D are probably pretty sore and tired today.”
Jaren Brinson, a second-rounder from 2019, is still out with a lower-body injury he suffered in training over the summer. They were also missing Hudson Thornton, a second-round pick in 2018, who is still waiting for his clearance to play in the WHL after starting the season playing in the USHL in North Dakota for the Fargo Force. Lamb said Brinson is close to returning to the ice. Thornton, who played in the BCHL last season for the Chilliwack Chiefs, was due to arrive in Kamloops on Sunday from his home in Winnipeg and Lamb said it was unlikely he will pass his COVID protocols and get tested in time for Monday’s game.
The Royals lost their season-opener 5-0 to the Kelowna Rockets. The Rockets are in Kamloops today to play the Vancouver Giants. Coaches are allowed in the building to scout games in the WHL hubs and Lamb and his staff planned to be there at Sandman Centre to watch their B.C. Division rivals face each in one of the two division hub cities, a frequent task for the coaches on their off-days for the next six weeks.
“I should know our division pretty good,” laughed Lamb.
