Taylor Stefishen wasn't mincing his words.
The Prince George Cougars were simply awful in their attempts to knock off the Western Hocley League Eastern Conference frontrunners.
Spanked 3-0 at home by the Saskatoon Blades on Tuesday, the Cougars hope to apply what they learned from their mistakes when they return to the ice tonight in Portland to face the Western Conference-leading Winterhawks in the first of a two-game series.
"(Tuesday's) game was embarrassing," said Stefishen, a 20-year-old winger. "We definitely didn't show up and I know, personally, I felt terrible out there and had no energy and it's unacceptable. If we want to be a top team in the league we have to show up every night and that obviously didn't happen."
The Winterhawks have cooled off slightly but still lead the WHL overall with 47 points. They've lost seven of their last 10 games but still sport a 22-8-0-3 record. The Cougars (15-12-2-1) are second in the B.C. Division, one point behind first-place Vancouver and have lost three straight after posting a season-high four-game winning streak.
"They are both going to be tough games and the thing that I like about our group is we always seem to rise to the occasion when we're playing a top-level team, the Saskatoon game being an exception," said Stefishen. "We win in tough places, if we decide we want to work and play our A-game we can win anywhere we are."
Winning at home hasn't come easy for the Cougars. On Tuesday they dropped one game below .500 at 6-7-1-1, while their record away from CN Centre is an impressive 9-5-1-1, including road wins against upper-echelon teams in Medicine Hat, Kootenay and Tri-City and Vancouver.
"For whatever reason we haven't been able to do the same thing that we do on the road, and that's disappointing," said Cougars head coach Dean Clark. "We do, in games, play very well, but in the same game we have periods of time when we don't. Last weekend (in back-to-back home losses to Seattle), our goaltending wasn't great at times."
An empty home rink hasn't helped the Cougars' cause. In a building that seats 5,995, they set an all-time attendance low of 1,663 in Tuesday's loss to Saskatoon.
"The guys were all at the (sold-out) Subway Series game and saw what it can be here and I wanted them to see that," said Clark. "It's going to take us some time for us to build up the confidence in the people here in Prince George to come and support us regularly, and we know that. But certainly when the building is empty the atmosphere isn't as good as it could be if it was full.
"There is still a bit of buzz around town about us and the fact we are better. We were in first place and played the first-place team in the Eastern Conference and we didn't get the crowd out, but I think they tend to look at the scores too. We had Seattle in town for two games and got one point out of four. The crowd might have been different if we got two victories out of that weekend."
Forwards Taylor Makin and Jaroslav Vlach returned from injuries Tuesday and for the first time in Clark's two seasons with the Cougars, the team in 100 per cent healthy. After tonight's game they will lose top sniper Brett Connolly to Team Canada's world junior tryout camp in Toronto. Impressive rookie defenceman Martin Marincin will join the Slovakian national team after Tuesday's home game against Swift Current.
