Before they took the opening face off Wednesday in Kamloops, the Prince George Cougars had the second-best defensive record in the WHL.
The key word is "had." After the Kamloops Blazers were done with them in a 6-1 rout, the Cougars' sparkling team goals-against average had lost its sheen.
Heading into the game, the Cougars had allowed just 27 goals in 11 games, a 2.45 average. It took less than 20 minutes for Blazers shooters Gage Quinney, Jesse Zaharichuk and Matt Needham to inflate those figures. They provided more than enough offence to defeat the Cougars.
Starting goalie Ty Edmonds, who made 40 saves in the Cougars' 3-1 win Sunday in Vancouver, allowed three goals on 13 shots he faced in the first period Wednesday, including Quinney's shorthanded goal to open the scoring at 5:58, and Mack Shields came into the game for the second period as the reliever. The Cougars' third power play of the game paid off with a goal 8:42 into the middle period when Jared Bethune got his stick on a rebound to reduce the Blazers' lead to 3-1. But that glimmer of hope for the Cougars soon vanished.
The Blazers responded with two more goals before the second intermission. Matt Revel beat Shields with a wrist shot at the 14:44 mark and Jermaine Loewen, a 17-year-old rookie from Arborg, Man., made it 5-1 with a low shot off from the side boards while pivoting, the first of his WHL career.
Deven Sideroff capped the scoring in the third period on a Kamloops power play.
Shots were 38-37 in the Cougars' favour.
After an 0-6 start, the Blazers (4-9-0-0, last in Western Conference) have now won four of their last five games. The Cougars (6-6-0-0) will be in Kelowna on Friday to try to knock off the Western Conference-leading Rockets (9-4-0-0). After a 3-0 loss to the Cougars in Prince George on Oct. 16, Kelowna has won two straight against the Cougars (6-2 in P.G. on Oct. 17 and 5-2 last Friday in Kelowna).
LOOSE PUCKS: The Vancouver Giants have acquired the second-leading scorer in the WHL last season in a trade Wednesday from the Medicine Hat Tigers. LW Trevor Cox, a 20-year-old from Surrey, who had 29 goals and 80 assists for 109 points in 69 games with the Tigers in 2004-15, was sent to the Giants in exchange for D Clayton Kirichenko, 19 and a third-round choice in the 2018 bantam draft. That came a day after the Giants and Calgary Hitmen pulled off a five-player swap. Going to Vancouver were D Ben Thomas, 19, and RW Chase Lang, 19; while the Hitmen picked up RW Jackson Houck, 20, LW Jakob Stukel, 18, and G Cody Porter, 18, as well as a conditional third-round pick in 2017... Team B.C. lost 6-3 to Alberta Wednesday in opening-day action at the Western Canada U-16 Challenge Cup in Calgary. The B.C. team includes F Jackson Leppard of North Vancouver, the Cougars' first-round pick (eighth overall) in the 2015 bantam draft, and F Liam Ryan, picked in the seventh round in 2015.
