Stay the course.
That's the message Mark Lamb wants to deliver to his Prince George Cougars as they embark on a difficult task this weekend taking on on one of the best teams in the Western Hockey League.
The Everett Silvertips are the main course on the menu Friday and Saturday at CN Centre as Cats return to home ice knowing it's well within their power to knock off the 'Tips. They did that last Friday, ending a three-year drought in Everett with a 4-3 victory in their first game coming out of the Christmas break.
"I liked our energy at the start of that game," said Lamb, the Cougars head coach and general manager. "We didn't tiptoe around and try to get to know what they were going to do, we just played our game and what I liked about it is we started putting pucks at the net, more than we usually did, and sometimes they went in.
"We've got to do that in bulk."
The Cougars (9-21-2-3) remain 10th out of 10 teams in the Western Conference, eight points behind the Tri-City Americans for the second wild-card playoff spot.
With the exception of a 5-1 stinker Saturday in Victoria, the Cougars can look back at their past five games with pride. They went into Victoria having strung three wins together for the first time all season. They're coming off a 3-2 overtime loss in Kelowna on Monday, which ended when Rockets' forward Liam Kindree scored with three seconds left in OT.
Twelve of their 26 losses thus far were by the slimmest of margins.
"We're getting on the other side of some really close games, our team plays real hard and we're starting to get some confidence in certain areas," said Lamb. "We've played against some pretty strong teams and played hard and we beat some top teams in the league.
"What we have to do is keep with the process we're doing and keep improving. We have a lot of guys who are making some strides. We're getting great goaltending and contributions from a lot of different people which is very important for us.
"The main thing is to keep playing hard and keep playing really good away from the puck," he said. "The Victoria game kind of got away from us but the Kelowna game, we were back to normal and it was a real battle. Killing off that five-minute major, we just ran out of gas in in overtime."
You won't find Taylor Gauthier among the league's leading goalies but he has been, without question, the Cougars' most valuable player this season. The 18-year-old Gauthier sports a 3.00 goals against average (18th-best in the WHL) and .911 save percentage (35th) and his 6-17-2-3 record is nothing to write home about, but Gauthier is the primary reason the Cougars are still in the hunt for their first playoff berth in three seasons.
"He's giving us maturity and leadership, his game has come so far, he's starting to really believe in himself," said Lamb. "He's such a good goalie and we need that, and (backup goalie Tyler) Brennan is no different. When Brennan gets in there he gives us a chance to win. The strength of our hockey team is our goaltending an our defence and that's how we have to play."
Lamb hopes to have centre Ilijah Colina back in the lineup after he missed Monday's game to rest up an existing shoulder injury that's cropped up in the preseason. Colina has been one of the Cats' hottest scorers lately, collecting half of his 12 points this season in his last four games (three goals, three assists).
Two veteran forwards won't play for the Cougars this weekend. Ethan Browne returned to his home in Sherwood Park, Alta., for personal reasons after a game in Vancouver, Dec. 17. The talented but injury-prone 19-year-old centre has missed the past three games.
Also unavailable is right winger Reid Perepeluk, 19, who will serve a two-game suspension as a result of a major kneeing penalty he received in the third period of the game in Kelowna when he ran into Rockets centre Matthew Wedman.
"Colina has been playing so good, and when you don't have the skill of him and Browne, it changes the dynamic of our hockey team," said Lamb. "That's another thing we don't dwell on too much because we've been like that (dealing with injuries) all year.
"(Perepeluk) has turned into a real important player for us, he's had a heckuva year. He's a unique player and he's very effective in his role."
Defenceman Keaton Dowhaniuk and forward Koehn Ziemmer, the third- and fourth-overall picks in the 2019 WHL bantam draft, have been practicing this week with the Cougars on loan from their respective midget teams and could play this weekend as injury replacements. Both played their first WHL games in December in Portland. Dowhaniuk has three goals and nine assists playing for the OHA Edmonton prep team, while Ziemmer, who just turned 15 on Dec. 8, has 10 goals and six assists in 18 games with the St. Albert Raiders triple-A midgets. The Raiders went 2-1-1 last week at the Mac's tournament in Calgary.
Another Cougar to watch this weekend is rookie winger Blake Eastman, 16, who plays the right side with Davin Griffin and Brendan Boyle. Eastman, a six-foot-three, 190-pound native of Ardrossan, Alta., scored his first career WHL goal last week in Everett.
The Silvertips will be without their usual starting goalie, Dustin Wolf, still playing for the American world junior team in the Czech Republic. In that game in Everett the Cougars scored three goals on seven shots in 15:36 of game action against 19-year-old starter Keegan Karki. Sixteen-year-old Braden Holt came in to replace Karki and in his WHL debut he allowed just one goal on 20 Cougar shots.
The Silvertips (25-8--2-1, second overall in the West) played Wednesday in Edmonton, losing 4-3 in a shootout to the Oil Kings.
Everett will also be without RW Tyson Phare (concussion) and LW Brendan Lee (upper-body injury). Phare, 17, was the Cougars first-round pick (18th overall) in the 2017 WHL bantam draft. The Cougars traded him in May to the Lethbridge Hurricanes for local midget prospect Fischer O'Brien. He played two games for Lethbridge and was sent to the Silvertips in a deal for a sixth-round bantam pick in 2023.
Friday is Pride Night at CN Centre and various groups representing the BGLTQ community will set up displays in the concourse to provide information and encourage diversity. Game time is 7 p.m.
