With just four 17-year-olds, the Cariboo Cougars are one of the youngest teams in the B.C. Hockey Major Midget League.
Wins are not going to come easily, not like they often did last year when an experienced crew followed up a Mac's tournament title with the regular-season crown and a postseason run to the league final.
The Valley West Hawks don't care about the success of the Cougars last season and took advantage of a series of mistakes their hosts made in two weekend games at Kin 1.
They went back home to Surrey after taking three out of a possible four points in their two-game series against the Cougars, tying the Cats 5-5 on Sunday after a 4-3 Hawks' win in the season-opener on Saturday.
Penalties hurt the Cougars in both games and Cougars head coach Trevor Sprague expected his team to experience the growing pains which became evident in the weekend games.
"We outshot them both times and the mistakes we made in the games were because we're young," said Sprague. "We took some undisciplined penalties, something we're going to have to fix. They got three power-play goals in this (Sunday) game and that hurt us, and that's a lesson were going to have to learn as a group. But there's a lot of things I liked in our game. We played with pace and took the game to them more than they took it to us, being an older team. The next couple weeks you'll see a different game from us and we'll capitalize on our opportunities and be more disciplined and we'll be better in our D-zone."
On Sunday, forward Jeremy Gervais scored his second goal of the afternoon to give the Cougars a 4-2 lead with 10:49 gone in the second period.
But the Hawks answered with consecutive power-play goals from Ben Evanish, who completed the hat-trick with five seconds left in the second period to tie the game 4-4.
Sprague benched starting goalie Aaron Jakobowski after the third Hawks goal and brought Dorrin Luding in to replace him.
"Two pucks went through him, they were goalie saves he has to make and he didn't make them," said Sprague. "When we break down, he makes saves and that's his job. But he's young, he's 16 years old and he'll get back into the net next weekend."
Cariboo veteran Colton Thomas restored the lead, successfully deking Hawks goalie Reece Klassen, with assists from Prince George Cougar prospects Tyler Ho and Joel Patsey. But with less than five minutes left, Bobby Russell connected from the slot to beat Luding with the tying goal.
Tyler Maser and Jesse Pomeroy also scored for the Cougars Sunday. Christian Bosa had the other Hawks goal.
In the Hawks' winning effort Saturday, Evanish also put up two goals and an assist. The Cougars were outshooting the Hawks 13-1 in the first period but allowed two goals in the final minute of the period and tried to play catchup the rest of the game. Josh Bruce and Bradley Stonnell also found the net for Valley West.
Chase Dubois, Ty Kolle and Riley Coish were the Cougar marksmen.
The Cougars will be in Richmond this weekend for the BCHMML Showcase to face the Vancouver Northeast Chiefs in a two-game set, Saturday and Sunday.
