The Prince George Cougars are having trouble scoring goals these days and that’s not a recipe for winning hockey games.
The Cats’ slump that started on their U.S. Division tour showed no signs of abating Friday at CN Centre, where the visiting Vancouver Giants snapped a six-game losing streak with a 4-1 win.
Ty Thorpe scored two goals, his first on an opening-period power play and his fourth to cap the Giants’ scoring late in the third period, while Swedish import goalie Jesper Vikman turned in a first-star 34-save performance to allow the Giants to draw first blood in the two-game weekend series.
Fabian Lysell and Justin Lies also scored for Vancouver. Carter MacAdams spoiled Vikman’s shutout when he scored his seventh of the season with 48 seconds left.
Tyler Brennan took the loss in goal for the Cougars, who outshot the Giants 35-31.
A CN Centre crowd of 1,670 took in the action. The Cougars got off to a solid start, outshooting the Giants 5-0, but had nothing to show for it. They also had the first nine shots of the second period.
“I didn’t think we played a bad game but we didn’t push enough, we didn’t have enough traffic in front of the goalie,” said Cougars head coach and general manager Mark Lamb. (Vikman) had a good game and we needed to do more in front of him to get (pucks) by him. We just need more.”
The Cougars have now lost seven of their last eight games, getting outscored a combined 40-13 in that span.
The Giants have had a rough week, which started in Seattle on Sunday when their afternoon game against the Seattle Thunderbirds was postponed with several Giants players caught in COVID protocols. They didn’t have enough healthy bodies to play Wednesday in Kelowna and it wasn’t until late Wednesday they learned the games in Prince George would proceed as scheduled.
The win was the first for Vancouver since the Giants traded away two of their better players – forward Justin Sourdif and defenceman Tanner Brown - on the Jan. 17 roster deadline day. The Giants (17-23-2-0) moved to within three points of the Cougars (18-24-2-1) for sixth place in the WHL’s Western Conference.
The rematch is set for Saturday (7 p.m. start).
