It's been eight months since Jordan Tkatch had a reason to celebrate at the end of hockey action at CN Centre.
On Wednesday night that wait came to a joyful end for the 19-year-old Prince Albert Raiders centre.
Tkatch was at the receiving end of a pretty three-way pass play and buried it into the Prince George Cougars' net to put the Raiders up 2-1 midway through the second period. The former Cougar used his speed to get a step ahead of Tate Olson and was in the clear to take a feed from defenceman Josh Morrissey for an easy tap-in on the way to a 5-2 victory over the Cougars.
Morrissey, the Winnipeg Jets' first-rounder in 2013, finished the game with an empty-net goal, his third point of the night.
With 2,360 in attendance, it was the second-straight stinker on home ice for the Cougars, who hadn't played since losing 5-2 last Wednesday to the Regina Pats. The win improved the Raiders' record to 14-14-0-0, while the Cougars dropped to 13-15-0-0.
The Raiders were well in control of the game just before the second intermission and the bad luck continued for the Cougars.
Haydn Hopkins got his stick lifted just inside the Raiders blueline, setting up a 4-on-1 break that Gage Quinney finished with a one-timer that sailed into the net over Ty Edmonds' shoulder.
The Cougars and their league-worst 22nd-ranked penalty kill came under fire in the first period when they were twice forced to kill off 5-on-3 disadvantages. The Cats gave up just one shot in the first 52-second stanza but the Raiders put it together later in the period with Marc McNulty and Sam Ruopp both serving penalties. Craig Leverton was ideally positioned to rap in a rebound with four seconds left in McNulty's roughing call.
The Cougars evened it up on their first power-play of the game, 15:52 into the first, a rebound cashed in from a sharp angle by David Soltes. It was the ninth of the season and sixth on the power play for the 19-year-old winger, who will represent his native Slovakia later this month in the world junior tournament in Montreal and Toronto.
Raiders goalie Rylan Parenteau, a 17-year-old from Maple Ridge, made his best save off Chase Witala seven minutes into the third period on a 2-on-0 break. Parenteau stayed on his feet to take away the angle away from Witala on his second breakaway chance of the game. Witala had missed the previous two games with a leg injury. Parenteau has now won six of his seven starts this season.
Witala's second great chance came just after Brad Morrison scored on a backhander with 6:32 gone in the third period to bring the Cougars to within a goal of tying it. The Raiders took the crowd out of it a few minutes later when Reid Gardiner batted in a bouncing puck from the side of the cage to make it a 4-2 count.
It would have been a lot worse for the Cougars if not for some stellar netminding from Edmonds, who made 28 stops in his first start since a 5-2 loss in Kamloops, Nov. 21. While he did let down his guard a bit on Gardiner's goal, Edmonds could not be faulted on any of the first three Raider shots that beat him.
As for his teammates, the blame game for a flat effort will no doubt be replayed over and over today when they get together to dissect the game tape before boarding the bus for Kelowna, where they face the first-overall Rockets on Friday.
LOOSE PUCKS: McNulty, a sixth-round draft pick of the Detroit Red Wings in 2013, returned to action after missing nine games in the past month with an upper-body injury and was probably the Cats' best defenceman in the game... Ruopp and Morrison were the Cougars' picks for the Ryobi hardest-working player awards for November... The Cougars will play Saturday in Kamloops.
