Two days after suffering their most one-sided loss of the season, the Prince George Cougars will try to get back on a winning track tonight in Kelowna.
Still licking their wounds from a 6-1 beating Wednesday night in Kamloops, the first in a 10-game season series against the Blazers, the Cougars will be hard-pressed trying to knock off the defending Western Hockey League-champion Rockets in their own building tonight.
In Kamloops, the Cougars fell behind early in the first period while on the power play when former Rocket Gage Quinney took advantage of a miscue from Cats' defenceman Joseph Carvalho and scored shorthanded on Ty Edmonds. The Blazers scored two more on Edmonds before the first period ended, and Cougars head coach Mark Holick sent Mack Shields in to play goal for the final two periods.
"I thought our start was real good, we peppered (Ingram) fast and early and to me it was the shorthanded goal (that switched the momentum)," said Holick. "It was a no look-pass and a low percentage play that turned into a goal against and the next power play we had we didn't get a sniff.
"I thought if we would have scored on our opportunities early, it would have been a different game. They did, and that was the difference."
Other than Jared Bethune's third-period power-play goal, the Cougars were unable to score on Blazer goalie Connor Ingram, who made 37 saves.
Holick wasn't faulting the play of Edmonds for the loss in Kamloops. Edmonds has been one of the top goalies in the WHL this season and made 40 saves in Sunday's 3-1 win on Vancouver. Holick said he made the switch to Shields to shake up the team, but that experiment obviously failed.
The loss left the Cougars (6-6-0-0) at the .500 mark. They've won back-to-back games just once this season and that's not good enough for Holick.
"We're still in a playoff spot and nobody's sitting here ready to do anything drastic, that's for sure, but we have to get going and try to get some traction," said Holick. "We have to find a way to get four or five wins in a row here and separate ourselves. Kelowna has a lot of guys back from last year and you can't replace experience. They have a lot of experience and we're not there yet and we don't know how to handle that adversity that you go through at times."
Exactly one week ago, the Rockets skated to a 5-2 win over the Cougars. The Rockets (9-4-0-0) lead the WHL Western Conference and they're looking to extend their winning streak to four games at the Cougars' expense. The teams split their games in Prince George. The Cougars won 3-0 on Oct. 16 and the Rockets took the rematch 6-2 the following day.
"We want to atone for last Friday," said Holick. "I thought we played them pretty good in our building and I want to make sure we do what we do when we skate and be physical and grind it out."
Cougars defenceman Tate Olson will miss his third straight game, out with an upper-body injury suffered in practice prior to the Cougars' game Sunday in Vancouver. D Max Martin (shoulder surgery) is also sidelined. Rockets sniper Rourke Chartier is still recovering from an upper-body injury and F Tanner Wishnowski is also out with an upper-body ailment.
