The Prince George Cougars suffered another power failure Friday and the Vancouver Giants seized the opportunity to dim the lights.
They pounded out a 3-1 decision over the Cougars at Langley Events Centre and the Giants (5-2-1-0) used the two points to leapfrog the Cats in the WHL B.C. Division standings.
The Cougars’ lack of production on the power play came back to bite them. They went scoreless in four opportunities, including a two-minute advantage late in the third period. They drew some energy from the return of winger Kyren Gronick from an injury but couldn’t score. They’re now 1-for-22 in their last seven games.
The Cougars (5-5-0-0, third in B.C. Division) have now lost two straight, after stringing together five wins against the Victoria Royals in an unprecedented five-game regular-season series prompted by pandemic-related scheduling changes. They’ll try to rediscover their winning ways Saturday in Kelowna in their first meeting of the season against the Rockets.
Mazden Leslie and Justin Sourdif, in the second period, and Payton Mount, with an empty-netter, scored for the Giants. Centre Ty Thorpe drew two assists and was picked as the game’s first star.
Cougars pivot Riley Heidt scored his fourth goal in the first period, the only shot to beat Giants’ goalie Will Gurski, who made 25 saves to notch his first win of the 2021-22 season.
“It was a back-and-forth affair, we had our chances and had a couple real good looks on the power play, the power play looked good zipping it around tonight and I though we were right there with them for the majority of the 60 minutes,” said Cougars associate coach Josh Dixon.
Dixon thought his team came out with a better effort than they showed in their previous game, a 3-0 loss to Kamloops at CN Centre last Saturday.
“I thought we had a lot more guys going, we had good energy tonight and good physicality,” he said. “They’re a hard forechecking team and I thought we did a much better job with our structure and in the D-zone we cleaned that up as well after they had a couple good chances early.”
The Giants outshot the Cougars 35-26. Cougars goalie Tyler Brennan earned third-star honours and was especially efficient while the Cougars were killing their penalties.
LOOSE PUCKS Nico Myatovic of Prince George scored the game-winning goal Friday to lift the Seattle Thunderbirds to a 5-3 win over the Tri-City Americans in Kennewick, Wash. Myatovic’s first of the season and fourth in 23 WHL games dating back to the spring pod season was an unassisted shorthanded effort, 2:32 into the second period. Myatovic, 17, was a sixth-round pick of the T-birds in 2019… Seattle will not play this season in Prince George. The T-birds were originally slated to visit the Cougars early in the season but the fourth wave of the pandemic forced the league to keep teams playing within their divisions to limit travel and that wiped out the T-birds-Cougars series… The Rockets (4-3-1-0) lost 5-4 to the visiting Portland Winterhawks on Friday and with that point for the OT loss Kelowna is just one point behind the Cougars with two games in hand.
