After a month between meaningful games, it took the North East Bobcats a period and a half to get up to game speed.
By that time, thanks to some alert goaltending from Tysen Smith, the Bobcats trailed the North Vancouver Storm by only the slimmest of margins in their opening game Monday morning at the bantam Tier 1 provincial hockey championship at Kin 1.
Jobey Pearson staked the Storm to a 1-0 lead with a power-play goal, taking advantage of puck that hit a seam in the boards to score the opener, 1:23 into the second period. The 'Cats erased the deficit 7:45 into the period, on a North Central power play, when defenceman Tye Peters took a cross-crease pass from Decker Mucjin and blasted it into the net.
The Bobcats leaned heavily on Smith's puckstopping abilities throughout the game and especially in the third period when forced to kill a series of penalties, but hung on to tie the Storm 1-1.
"A few penalties in the third took away our momentum but we had our chances to win that game too - the penalty-kill was great and the power play was good, we scored a nice one," said Bobcats head coach Mirsad Mucjin. "We're going to build off this games and have a big one (Monday night) and get back to our full-season form. Our last competitive game was the 17th of February.
"This is a long marathon and we're not going to sprint too early. It's a lot of hockey by Thursday night and that's our plan to get there."
The Bobcats play regular-season games in the Okanagan Mainline Hockey Association and finished tied with Kamloops for first place. Vernon beat Kamloops in the league final.
As the only North Central zone Tier 1 team, the Bobcats did not participate in the OMAHA playoffs.
The Bobcats went on to beat the Victoria Racquet Club Kings 7-5 in the late game Monday night.
Victoria lost its opener 2-1 to Cloverdale earlier Monday. North Central returns to the ice in the six-team tournament Tuesday at 7:45 p.m. to face the Vernon Kings. The Bobcats roster also includes forwards Nico Myatovic, Amar Powar, Scott Cousins, Brady McIsaac, Chase Pacheco, Max Sanford, Dylan Illett, Dawson Davis, Leighton Pillipow and Joshua Sale; defencemen Matyas Mocilac, Zachary Leslie, Mitchell Lennox, Tymon Sankopulos and Benjamin Sullivan; and goalie Jasper Tait.
