Don't look now, but the Prince George Cougars are hot on the tails of the top teams in the Western Hockey League.
As hard as that is to believe, a third of the way into the season, it's true.
The Cougars (17-9-0-1) locked up their fifth-straight victory Sunday night in Vancouver, hanging on for a 6-5 decision over the Vancouver Giants to move eight games above the .500 mark and climb into a third-place tie with the Seattle Thunderbirds in the Western Conference standings.
A win tonight at CN Centre (7 p.m. start) over the Kootenay Ice, whose 6-23-2-0 record ranks worst in the 22-team WHL, would leave the Cougars just two points shy of the second-place Victoria Royals and within seven points of the league-leading Kelowna Rockets.
You have to go way back to the 1999-2000 season to find the most recent time the Cougars finished a season with twice as many wins as they had losses. They went 43-20-4-5 that year, finished second the West and advanced to the third round of playoffs before bowing out in a five-game series with Spokane.
For a bit of perspective, Chase Witala, Joe Carvalho and Luke Harrison, the Cougars' three current overage players, were just four years old at the time. Since then, only three teams in Cougar history (2001-02, 2005-06 and 2006-07) have finished with winning records.
These are heady times indeed for win-starved Cougar fans and tonight's opponents are ripe for the plucking, having lost seven straight games. The Ice are young and in rebuilding mode and are on pace to miss the playoffs for only the first time in 13 seasons. That string of postseason regularity includes three seasons under head coach Mark Holick (2007-2010), now the bench boss of the Cougars.
Current Ice head coach Luke Pierce was hired in May after five-and-a-half seasons in the BCHL as head coach and general manager of the Merritt Centennials.
Tonight's game marks the return of two homegrown juniors - Ice defenceman Bryan Allbee and right winger Austin Gray. Both 18-year-olds are Prince George natives who played last season for the major midget Cariboo Cougars. The six-foot, 180-pound Allbee has two goals and six points and a minus-17 rating in 30 games this season. Gray, who stands six-feet and weighs 162 pounds, has been held scoreless in four games with the Ice since he arrived in a trade Nov. 29 from the Portland Winterhawks.
The Ice will likely be without their two leading scorers. Centre Luke Philip, who has 13 goals and 29 points in 22 games, and right wing Zak Zaborsky (11-9-20) have both been sidelined with upper-body injuries and have yet to play on this road-trip. The Ice added left-winger Jesse Zaharichuk (4-9-13, third in team scoring) in a Nov. 29 trade with Kamloops.
Jesse Gabrielle (16-10-26) is the Cougars' top point-getter followed by Chase Witala (14-8-22), who had three goals and an assist in Sunday's in a 6-5 win.
Brogan O'Brien (9-11-20) and Brad Morrison (7-13-20) are next on the Cougars' scoring list.
Rookie centre Justin Almeida, who played last year with Allbee and Gray, will be trying to add to his goal total after he collected the first of his WHL career to open the scoring Sunday night. The 16-year-old native of Kitimat, who picked up 22 goals and 47 points in 35 games last season with the Cariboo Cats, also has three assists to show for his 22 WHL games this season.
"I thought Justin, the last few games, has played well - he's a smart player, always in the right place and sometimes you just need to have a lucky break," said Cougars assistant coach Roman Vopat.
"(His goal Sunday) started with a great forecheck by Bartek Bison and Aaron Boyd and Justin was at the right time and right place and got the puck and finally scored and I'm very happy for him."
Expect Ty Edmonds to get the start in goal for the Cougars. The 19-year-old from Winnipeg picked up his second shutout of the season in the Cougars' 3-0 win Friday in Everett. Edmonds now sports a 1.98 goals-against average, second only to Carter Hart of the Everett Silvertips. Edmonds leads the WHL with a .938 save percentage.
