The Prince George Cougars suffered a 2-1 loss to the Burnaby Winter Club to open the Bantam Tier 1 B.C. Hockey provincial championship Monday at Kin 1 arena.
And while it was a loss, Cougars head coach Chris Bond said considering Burnaby had only lost six games as of March 7 (they had a record of 54-6-5), the Cougars will take it.
"We were the underdogs going in, we knew we had to have one of our best performances of the season," said Bond. "That's the first time we've played them this season, historically they're a very good club and it was a big challenge for us. That's a feather in our cap."
The two sides traded goals in the first period. The Prince George goal came from forward Devin Sutton. Burnaby broke the tie in the first 10 minutes of the second period.
Burnaby kept the pressure on for the remainder of the game to get an insurance goal, but Cougars netminder Jake Sweet shut the door to maintain the one-goal differential.
Sweet was pulled the last 40 seconds for an extra attacker, but the Cougars couldn't bury their chances.
The Cougars had a game plan for playing on the new Kin 1 rink.
"That was our first real test playing on the bigger ice and it worked well," said Bond. "We knew we had to control between the dots [face-off circles]."
The road at provincials doesn't get any easier for the Cougars who sported a 17-18-1 record as of March 7. They battled Cowichan Valley Capitals (41-8-0) in Monday's late game.
Results weren't available at the Citizen's press deadline.
Cougars battle No. 1 ranked North Shore Winter Club from Vancouver tonight (Tuesday) at 8 p.m.; Kamloops Wednesday at 8 p.m. and Kelowna Rockets (29-17-3) Thursday at 2 p.m. The championship final between the top-two teams is Thursday at 8 p.m.
