The Prince George Cougars arrived at the rink Saturday in a good mood.
They’d won four of their games and had the added incentive of trying to prolong a three-game home winning streak facing the Kamloops Blazers, the team with the worst record in the WHL’s Western Conference.
Piece of cake, right?
Think again.
The Blazers obviously had other ideas and totally outclassed the Cougars in every department, handing them a 5-1 loss in the first of a two-game weekend series at CN Centre.
Blazers winger Jermaine Loewen polished his reputation as a Cougar-killer with two goals. His first came end of the first period, 41 seconds after Josh Pillar’s opening goal, and Loewen collected his second of the night just before the second intermission. Both came on power plays. Loewen now has nine goals in his last 11 games against the Cougars.
The visitors led 3-0 at that point and Zane Franklin and Luc Smith cashed in two more goals 20 seconds apart in the third period on a 5-on-3 power play to put it away.
Mike MacLean potted a rebound with 3:35 left to wreck Dylan Ferguson’s shutout.
The Cougars managed just 14 shots while the Blazers fired 36 at Taylor Gauthier.
The Blazers went 3-for-7 on the power play while the Cougars failed to score in their two chances.
“It was terrible, we were awful, and it wasn’t just one guy it was everybody,” said Cougars head coach Richard Matvichuk on the post-game broadcast. “We had three things going in, we talked about discipline, we talked about playing hard and we talked about turnovers and we went 0-for-3 in all of them. We got beat in our own building by a team that wanted it more.”
The win left the Blazers (7-9-1-1) five points behind the Cougars (9-9-1-2). Kamloops has played three fewer games than Prince George.
The pro-Cougar crowd of 2,600 had very little to cheer about but it’s not too late for their team to salvage the weekend. The Cougars face the Blazers again Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m.
