Prince George Cougars sniper Jesse Gabrielle is back in the saddle again.
His nine-game scoring slump is history, his suspension behind him, and he's back doing what he's done so well since he joined the Cougars 17 months ago - scoring goals, setting up teammates and pestering opponents with his hard-nosed tactics and unrelenting work ethic.
After being banished three games for a cross-checking major, Gabrielle returned to the lineup Saturday in Kamloops playing on a line with Brogan O'Brien and Kody McDonald and had a three-point night with a goal and two assists in a 5-4 overtime loss to the Blazers.
Gabrielle ended his goal-less streak in the Cougars' big 6-5 comeback win over Medicine Hat, Jan. 11, and has three goals and four assists in his last six games. That brings his season totals to 22 goals 18 assists and 40 points in 39 games. The native of Moosomin, Sask., missed 11 of the Cougars' 50 games and with 22 games left he will be hard-pressed to match his 40-goal, 75-point season last year. That's not a bother to the signed Boston Bruins prospect, not with the Cougars winning like they are.
"For me, nothing's really changed in the way I'm playing, it's just they're going in now," said Gabrielle. "As a scorer, you're going to go through those kind of spells where the pucks aren't going your way but it's something you have to battle through. Some adversity never hurts but it was good to get that slump out of the way."
Saturday's loss in Kamloops came on the heels of a 2-1 the night before at CN Centre handed out by the Moose Jaw Warriors. In six of the seven games they've won this month, the Cougars have had to come from behind, needing three shootouts and one overtime session to put their opponents away. But if Cats' fans are under the impression they're struggling to find their stride since making some big changes at the trade deadline, the standings tell a different tale. Heading into tonight's game, they're 7-2-1-0 in their last 10 and they continue to lead the WHL with a 34-13-3-0 record.
"We haven't been playing our best hockey but we're getting wins, and when you come out of a tough month with a record like that it's good motivation to keep pushing in the right direction, " said Gabrielle. "We're going through some things a team right now but it's good, we're figuring stuff out right now and it's better to figure it out now than having to worry about it in April.
"A lot of it is guys getting familiar with the system and the new guys (Nikita Popugaev, Radovan Bondra) have been great picking up a lot of the stuff. It's a lot for them to take in. I played on three different (WHL) teams so I know what they're thinking. We're going in the right direction with our team."
In their only other meeting this season the Cougars lost to the Rebels 4-1 in Red Deer on Jan. 10, to start of a four-game roadtrip. The Rebels scored three goals on 15 shots in the first period, prompting Cougars head coach Richard Matvichuk to take goalie Ty Edmonds out of the game and replace him with Nick McBride.
"That was probably one of our worst games of the year, but you're going to have games like that, it's our goal as a team to limit those games as much as possible," said Gabrielle. "This roadtrip I think we're going to give a little payback to them."
McBride played well Monday in Langley, making 30 saves to back the Cougars' to a 2-1 shootout win over the the Vancouver Giants, but Edmonds will get the start and a chance for redemption against the Rebels tonight (6 p.m. PT, CIRX The Goat, 94.3 FM).
Sporting a 2.40 goals-against average (third in WHL) and .917 save percentage (seventh-best),Edmonds has a 25-9-1 season record and with a win tonight he could tie the Prince George franchise record for most wins in a career, set by Scott Myers (1996-2000).
Now in his fourth season in the WHL, Edmonds has already eclipsed records Myers held for most career games played (Myers played in 188, Edmonds is now at 198) and most saves (5,282 for Edmonds, 5,004 for Myers).
The Cougars spent two days this week in Banff, where they had a chance to recharge their batteries in the midst of the most brutal part of their season schedule. They stayed in condos rather than hotel rooms, played a game of curling and for the first time this month had back-to-back practices. This is their second Central Division swing in two weeks. If they win tonight and can sweep Edmonton Saturday and Sunday, the Cougars will return home with 10 wins in January and points in 11 of the 14 games this month.
"We were fortunate to come from behind that whole roadtrip and that doesn't happen very often in this league," said Cougars associate coach Steve O'Rourke, who spent the previous three seasons as an assistant with the Rebels. "Even the weaker teams, if they're leading after two periods, the records aren't very good at coming back. With the changes we've made, we're winning hockey games but we'd like to win them a little bit differently.
"Coaches aren't always happy in these moments but we're also trying to understand the travel and the sickness and the changes and manage it and stay calm and cool, looking at the big picture. If we can get through this and get into February and start getting our practices in again it will push us right to the final wire. It's just getting the work ethic back that we've had all season."
As good as the Cougars have been all season, Popugaev is their only top-20 scorer, and all but eight of his 59 points came before Moose Jaw traded him to Prince George. As O'Rourke points out, they don't have an elite group of scorers like Regina or Medicine Hat, but what they do have is sufficient depth to play everybody in the lineup. In the long postseason, he figures that ability to wear teams down bodes well for the Cougars.
O'Rourke coached in Red Deer with former Kelowna Rockets head coach Jeff Truitt, who pointed out to him that in 2004, the year the Rockets won the Memorial Cup, leading scorer Randall Gelach had just 49 points. For O'Rourke, it's hard not to draw the parallels.
"For us here, it's understanding we have good players but we don't have anyone in the top 20 and (Popugaev) doesn't count because those points came somewhere else," said O'Rourke. "We're a team that does it through four lines, six defencemen and two goaltenders every night. That's how deep we are, and when Tanner (newly-acquired winger Wishnowski) gets back playing 100 per cent we'll be deeper again. That's how this team has been built."
