Adam Beukeboom was nothing but a stop-gap measure when he joined the Prince George Cougars in January in a trade from Vancouver.
The Cougars needed someone to share the goaltending workload with Ty Edmonds and Beukeboom, who started the season a mountain range away playing junior A in Drumheller, was given a chance to rekindle his WHL career.
Well if he keeps playing like he did Friday night against the Red Deer Rebels his stock as a late-blooming saviour capable of major junior brilliance will continue to rise. Beukeboom made 47 saves to give the Cougars what they needed to preserve a 5-3 win over the Rebels - the fifth-consecutive victory for the streaking Cats, who moved to within four points of the eighth-place Tri-City Americans.
It was the second-straight win for Beukeboom, who slammed the door last week on the Swift Current Broncos.
"I thought he was a big difference-maker and when he needed to make those saves he did," said Cougars head coach Mark Holick, who will likely give Beukeboom the start in the rematch tonight (7 p.m.)
"In the third, they had three really good chances and in the worst case it should have been tied for them, but he did his job."
Facing their fifth consecutive loss and down by two goals, the Rebels came out for the third period on the warpath, peppering the Cougars in a shooting gallery and Beukeboom was ready for it. Before the ice was dry from the flood he'd kicked out a bullet drive from Rhys Dieno and got help from the goalpost on Grayson Pawlenchuk's follow-up. Beukeboom was the Cats' best penalty-killer with Todd Fiddler in the box for interference, stopping shot after shot.
Eventually, Scott Feser snuck one past Beukeboom from the point at the 8:12 mark to draw within one, but that's as close as it got. The Cougars withstood a goalie-out, sixth-attacker push in the dying minutes and Fiddler ended it with an empty-netter, his second goal and third point of the game.
Leading 2-1 to start the second period, the Rebels were denied twice by Beukeboom, making his second straight start. Beukeboom stood tall to smother a shot from Dieno and never left his feet while taking away the angle on the rebound follow-up from Presten Kopeck. Knowing how much their 19-year-old goalie had bailed them out, the Cougars responded with three unanswered goals to take a 4-2 lead.
Joseph Carvalho's point shot caught a piece of a Rebel defenceman and found the net at 3:49, and less than a minute the Rebels left Fiddler uncovered in the slot and he wired a slapper past Patrik Bartosak for his 33rd goal of the season.
Zach Pochiro, who started the game centring the fourth line, worked his way up the depth chart as the game progressed. That paid off for the Cougars when Pochiro knocked down a clearing attempt with his glove and got a shot on net and the rebound came out to Brad Morrison, who chipped the puck in from a sharp angle. The Pochiro-Morrison combination was dangerous on more than a few occasions
The Cougars had the upper hand in the early going. Sam Ruopp, the 135th-ranked North American skater in the latest NHL Central Scouting poll, one-timed a point shot on a pass from Jansen Harkins to open the scoring and at that point the Cougars had a 10-5 shot advantage. But all that hard work from the Cats soon got forgotten. Consecutive penalties to Cougars Aaron Macklin and Marc McNulty gave Red Deer a two-player advantage for 89 seconds and they took full advantage with goals from Kopeck and Haydn Fleury, who scored just as McNulty stepped back on the ice. Fleury, a 17-year-old projected as an NHL first-rounder, lived up to his advance billing with a strong outing on the Rebels blueline.
LOOSE PUCKS: The Cats host the Portland Winterhawks Monday at 2 p.m. Portland defeated the Americans 10-3 Friday in Kennewick, Wash.
