Jesse Gabrielle has joined some elite company atop the WHL scoring charts.
The 18-year-old Prince George Cougars right winger has a league-leading 27 goals this season, tied with Jon Martin of the Swift Current Broncos and Dryden Hunt of the Moose Jaw Warriors.
Gabrielle added to his total with a goal in each of the Cougars' games over the weekend against Victoria. He scored the only goal in a 1-0 win Friday and found the net for his team's second goal early in the second period Saturday. That marker tied a game the Cougars would eventually lose 4-3.
Gabrielle, one of the most fit Cougars when he arrived for training camp in August, is utilizing his fitness advantage to create time and space for himself on the ice and generate offence. He also leads the Cougars with 45 points.
"It's a good feeling - obviously you want to keep getting pucks on net and getting to the dirty areas and keep grinding away and getting any kind of goals you can," said Gabrielle, the fourth-round pick of the Boston Bruins in 2015.
"I try not to think about (scoring) too much. Obviously it's nice to get a few goals. It's a process of just playing right and I'm getting rewarded for it. But right now it's more about getting the team winning."
The Cougars acquired Gabrielle Aug. 10 along with a fourth-round bantam pick in 2017 in a trade with the Regina Pats for 16-year-old forward Lane Zablocki and a fourth-rounder in 2016.
Gabrielle will be back in action tonight when the Cougars host the Seattle Thunderbirds in the first of a two-game series at CN Centre and he knows his team is in for two difficult games. The T-birds (22-14-3-0) rank fifth overall in the Western Conference, five points back of the third-place Cougars (25-15-1-1).
"We haven't played their full team, they've always been missing a few guys, but they're a big strong team and a little younger, like us," said Gabrielle. "They're fun games playing against those guys and they work hard so we have to be prepared and just play our game."
The T-birds beat Everett 3-2 in overtime at home Saturday, a day after they posted a 3-1 win over Portland. Mathew Barzal, one of the better players for Canada at the World Junior Hockey Championship in Helsinki, scored twice in the win over the Silvertips.
One of four NHL-drafted players with Seattle, Barzal was picked 16th overall in 2015 by the New York Islanders. The others are LW Ryan Gropp (New York Rangers, second round 2015), RW Keegan Kolisar (Columbus, third round 2015), and D Ethan Bear (Edmonton, fifth round 2015).
Also in the mix for Seattle is centre Scott Eansor, who played for the U.S. world junior team, and 20-year-old goalie Landon Bow, acquired a week ago in a trade from Swift Current for goalie Taz Burman, winger Jamal Watson and a second-round pick in 2016. Bow played both weekend games for the T-birds and allowed just three goals on 56 shots.
The Cougars lost 4-1 to the T-birds in the first of the four-game regular-season series Oct. 3 in Kent, Wash. At the time, Barzal, Bear and Gropp were all still with their NHL teams. Eansor and Barzal were fulfilling world junior team duties on Dec. 15 when the Cougars beat the T-birds in their own building 6-2.
"There's no doubt, they're a tough team," said Cougars head coach Mark Holick. "They have good size and good skill and they have good goaltending. They picked up Landon Bow in a trade and we'll have our boys ready. This is the time of year where things get tight, and you have to work and check and be disciplined."
The Cougars learned Saturday they can't afford to take penalties. Two of the four goals the Royals scored in their 4-3 win came on power plays. The Cougars are the most penalized team in the WHL with 793 minutes through 42 games, an average of 18.9 minutes per game. Lethbridge, the second-most penalized team, averages 14.5 minutes. The Cougars have played shorthanded 187 times. Only three teams - Edmonton, Saskatoon and Tri-City - have been forced into more penalty-killing situations.
The Cougars' saving grace has been their penalty killing. They rank fourth-best in the WHL with an 83.9 per cent success rate. They also lead the league in shorthanded goals with nine, and the speedy Gabrielle has scored five of those shorties.
Holick saw several things he didn't like in Saturday's game and was planning to cure those bad habits in Monday's practice. He admitted the Jansen Harkins-Brad Morrison-Jared Bethune forward trio was good in all areas on the ice and he liked the offence Gabrielle's line supplied. But Holick wasn't impressed with the defensive-zone play of the Gabrielle-Chase Witala-Brogan O'Brien unit and said his energy line, with Colby McAuley returning from a three-game suspension to play with Kody McDonald and Luke Harrison, was not very effective.
"I want to see us make plays harder," Holick said. "I thought our passes out of our zone were soft and getting knocked down or we went to check a guy and didn't have strong sticks.
"You don't have to be animals but you have to be hard to play against and I didn't think we were, as consistently as we need to be."
Game time tonight and Wednesday is 7 p.m.
