In the three years Taylor Gauthier has been stopping pucks for the Prince George Cougars his team has taken its lumps as Western Hockey League bottom-feeders.
The Cats have lost three times as many games as they’ve won over that three-year span and consequently Gauthier, a world-class netminder, has never played in the playoffs.
That drought will continue in the pandemic-shortened 2021 season unless the league comes up with a plan to make some kind of postseason happen. Playoffs or not, the Cougars have 24 games to settle bragging rights in the B.C. Division and that quest back to respectability started Saturday in Kamloops when they opened the season with a close 5-4 loss to the Kamloops Blazers.
“I think we’re ready to win,” said Gauthier, prior to the season start. “Last year at the end of the year I think we had really built up that winning culture in the locker room and we’ve only grown that over the last couple weeks here, working hard in practice and getting our habits right. I’m just looking forward to getting out there and seeing all the hard work we’ve put in hopefully pay off in the near future.
“I think we’re going to be fast; we have lots of young guys on the team, lots of rookies (10) and they’re going to be real excited to get out of the gate and get going. We still have that Prince George grit that other (Cougar) teams in recent years have had but we have a lot of skill that has come up and I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do in games. I notice how mature they are for their age; guys are coming in at 16 and 17 now and lot of them are acting like they’re 18 or 19 and their skill levels are super high.”
No spectators will be allowed in WHL buildings this year but Cougar fans have a lasting impression from March 2020 when their team put three consecutive home-ice wins together in their final week before they left town for a six-game roadtrip they never got to play, just as the the virus began wreaking havoc on the world. So what is it about this year’s team that gives Cats fans encouragement their winning ways will resume?
Goaltending is a position of strength for the Cougars with 2001-born Gauthier back for his fourth WHL season after winning a spot in December with Canada’s world junior team. He’s coming off his best junior season after posting a 2.93 goals-against average and .917 save percentage with two shutouts as a 50-game workhorse. Tyler Brennan proved in 15 games as a 16-year-old rookie last season he’s a quite capable of filling in for Gauthier and he will be used more often with so many games packed tight together in a short time. Ty Young, a rookie from Lethbridge chosen in the eighth round in 2019, is the understudy in the Cougars’ camp.
Lack of scoring was the Cougars’ downfall in 2019-20. They scored just 144 times in 62 games, the league’s second-most anemic offence, so there’s only one way to go. With defenceman Jack Sander, and forwards Ilijah Colina, Connor Bowie, Tyson Upper and Jonny Hooker on the 26-player roster the Cougars return five of their top-10 pointgetters from last year. Bowie, with 12 goals, was the only one of that returning group to reach double figures.
“I’m not sure we will have more firepower,” said head coach and general manager Mark Lamb. “We have the capability but we’re young. The biggest thing when you’re jumping into the Western League, it’s such a big step. We have a lot of skilled guys but it’s the guys coming back who have to improve as well. We have to score by committee still.
“It’ll take 10 games to get a good feel, but we’ll be a good-skating team and we have the capability to get up and down the ice. I think as a whole, our skating will be quite noticeable within our young guys.”
This is a time for the Cougars’ highly-touted rookie crop to get a taste of what they can expect for the next few years. Koehn Ziemmer (drafted fourth overall in 2019), Carter MacAdams, Michael Svenson, Kyren Gronick, 2005-born Riley Heidt (drafted second overall in 2020) and Prince George native Fischer O’Brien will get their chances to shine.
Blake Eastman, Mitch Kohner, Davin Griffin and Craig Armstrong (a ninth overall pick in 2018) will be better for having played regular shifts last season. For the older skaters born in 2001 - Bowie, Hooker, Upper, Ethan Browne, Brendan Boyle, and defenceman Majid Kaddoura - the next six weeks is their chance to show their coaches they deserve to get invited back in September.
“We’ve got a lot of young guys that seem like they’ve got some pretty crazy hands and eyesight out there, and just overall talent, but don’t sleep on our older guys, guys like Ethan Browne, Johnny Hooker, Connor Bowie, Tyson Upper and Brendan Boyle, because they’re looking pretty deadly in practice,” said Sander, one of the Cougars’ two overagers along with Colina.
“One of the things we’ve tried to drill into it after being out of it and doing summer skates for so long is you lose a lot of structure and kind of forget how to play hockey a little bit and I think we’ve covered it quite a bit and Mark (Lamb) has done a good job getting us back up to speed.”
Nineteen-year-old Czech import Filip Koffer and his nine goals and 24 points won’t be back this year.
Sander, the players’ choice as captain, has blossomed into a solid two-way blueliner, and he’ll join forces with returnees Kaddoura, Ethan Samson and Aiden Reeves, to try to fill in for smooth puck-mover Cole Moberg, who is not coming back from the AHL. All eyes are on Keaton Dowhaniuk, the just-turned 17-year-old the Cougars selected third overall in 2019 and Jaren Brinson is another top prospect from that 2004-birth year. Hudson Thornton brings USHL and BCHL experience in his second season of junior eligibility.
The controlled environment in Kamloops is not as restrictive as it was for Gauthier in December when he was with Canada’s world junior team in Edmonton. The players in Kamloops each have roommates and are allowed to go outside to walk from their hotel to and from the adjacent rink. That’s in sharp contrast to the weeks of solitary confinement Gauthier endured in his room while they were going after a world championship.
The Kamloops hub also includes the Vancouver Giants, who lost 7-3 to the Blazers Friday night. The teams will play virtually every other night for the next 47 days, with each team playing their B.C. Division opponents six times. The other division hub is in Kelowna, which includes the host Rockets and Victoria Royals. The B.C. Division is the last of the four WHL divisions to start playing. After a six-month delay, Gauthier says he and his teammates feel fortunate the season is going ahead.
“We’ve seen junior leagues across the country get shut down in the blink of an eye and we’re very grateful the B.C. government gave us the go-ahead to play this year,” said Gauthier. “It’s very crucial for a lot of us that we don’t miss out on a full year of development. There are guys who want to do more than just play junior hockey so I think it’s huge we can get out there and get some eyes on us and also play the game we love at the same time.”
Fresh from a 7-3 win over the Giants on Friday, Kamloops has plenty of leftovers from the Blazer team that won 41 of 63 games and was considered a Memorial Cup contender before the 2019-20 season was abruptly cancelled. The veteran-stacked roster includes world junior forward Connor Zary and goalie Dylan Garand and bruising defenceman Montana Onyebuchi and the Blazers have to be considered the team to beat in the B.C. Division. Kelowna will also be strong with the likes of defenceman Kaeden Korczak conducting the offence and Dillon Hamaliuk and David Kope working their magic around the net.
Lamb is beginning his second full season as head coach and third as Cougars GM, with Jason Smith on board for his third year as associate coach and Taylor Dakers entering his third season as goalie coach.
The Cougars are still probably a year away from being a championship contender and that doesn’t matter anyway with the likelihood there will be no league title to play for this season. This six-week schedule is more on an audition for what’s coming next fall when hopefully things are back to normal and teams get back to playing a 68-game season with playoffs to follow. But Gauthier is not just being optimistic when he says he expects his team to win now and the Cougars appear to have the ingredients to emerge as the most improved team in the WHL.
LOOSE PUCKS: All Cougar games this season are being webcast on WHL Live… Connor Bedard, the 15-year-old centre from West Vancouver, chosen first overall in the 2020 draft, has been nothing short of spectacular in his WHL debut with the Regina Pats. Through eight games he leads the Pats in scoring with six goals and 13 points and has registered at least a point in each of those games… Everett Silvertips goalie Dustin Wolf had record-setting shutout streak snapped Friday in a 2-1 win over the Portland Winterhawks in Portland. The streak lasted 216 minutes 26 seconds, the longest ever in the WHL to start a season. The Calgary Flames draft pick has stopped 101 of 102 shots for a .990 save percentage… The WHL had no positive results after 1,002 COVID-19 tests from March 20-26. Since Feb. 12 there has been just one positive test.
