The losing streak is over, but the Prince George Cougars are not out of the woods yet.
Despite a win Saturday in Everett and a point gained Sunday in Chilliwack, their hold on a Western Hockey League playoff position is precarious at best.
Just five points separate the Cougars and Kamloops Blazers from the ninth-place Chilliwack Bruins, who beat the Cats 4-3 Sunday in a shootout. Chilliwack (26-30-2-3) has three games in hand over the seventh-place Cougars (29-31-2-2) and eighth-place Blazers (29-31-3-1), who each have eight games left in the season. Prince George and Kamloops are tied with 62 points.
On Sunday, Robin Soudek scored twice in regulation time and had the only shootout goal, and Lucas Gore made 45 saves and turned aside three Cougars in the shootout to lead the Bruins to victory.
The Cougars blew 2-0 and 3-1 leads. Brandon Magee fired the equalizer with 9:29 left in the third period. Cougars captain Brett Connolly opened the scoring 3:39 into the game and picked up his team-leading 39th of the season, before Soudek connected on a Chilliwack power play in the last minute of the first period. Tayler Thompson also scored for the Cats, who had an abundance of chances in regulation time to put the Bruins away.
"We probably should have been up by three or four or maybe even five, after a couple periods, but we weren't," said Cougars head coach Dean Clark.
"They hung around and [Magee got] a loose one that was kind of around the net. With five games in six nights, with some guys the first thing that goes is your mind and we didn't make some great decisions at times, but we certainly did enough to get some chances. Their goalie made some saves and we hit some posts.
"We worked pretty hard to get a point and it was disappointing to not get two, but certainly [compared] to the previous five games I certainly like our last two."
Saturday in Everett, Wash., defenceman Sena Acolatse scored two power-play goals, including the gamewinner with less than five minutes left, as the Cats snapped a five-game losing skid with a 3-1 win over the Everett Silvertips. Connolly also scored, while shorthanded.
Ty Rimmer made 34 saves as the game's first star. Evan Morden collected his first WHL career goal for Everett.
The Cougars got hammered 8-0 Friday in Spokane to start the trip, after dropping a pair of two-game home sets to Portland and Everett.
"I thought we did a real good job of coming back and playing two good road games, it was a good way to respond after not having played very well," said Clark. "We played better and that's what we had to do. I really like the way we finished off the trip."
Since the Jan. 10 trade deadline, when they ranked first in the B.C. Division with a 21-16-2-1 record, the Cougars have gone 8-15-0-1.
The Cougars have a tough schedule ahead of them.
They host Spokane at CN Centre Friday and Saturday, then have a home date Tuesday against Red Deer. After that, they have just one more home game, March 19 against Kamloops.
