The Kamloops Blazers towed a woodshed behind the bus on the trip up from Kamloops and made use of it in both their weekend games.
They used it as cover while handing the Prince George Cougars back-to-back butt-kickings – winning 5-1 on Saturday followed by a 7-3 thumping Sunday afternoon.
Unfortunately for the Cougar faithful, all 2,301 of them in the CN Centre stands, there was no way to avoid seeing the carnage on the ice that befell their hockey team.
The Blazer boys from Marwayne, Alta., (population 500) – Zane Franklin and Orrin Centazzo – feasted on the opportunities they created as wing men on a line with centre Luc Smith. Franklin, who joined the Blazers over the summer in a trade from Lethbridge, had a five-point game Sunday with a goal and four assists, while Centazzo, a former Everett Silvertip, and Smith each rang up a goal and two assists.
“That was a good night for us but we’ve been playing together for awhile and it’s been clicking for awhile,” said Franklin, 19, who played minor hockey with Centazzo every other year in Marwayne, a small farming community 45 minutes north of Lloydminster.
“I love playing with those guys. It’s a new opportunity for me and I’m just trying to take advantage of it. We just played to our strengths this weekend. They’re a heavy team with some big forwards that like to hit and I don’t think we can match that so we just used our speed and chipped pucks and that just kept building momentum.”
The Franklin line’s picturesque tic-tac-toe power-play goal that ended with Smith one-timing Franklin’s shot-pass from the opposite side 13 minutes into the second period made it a 5-0 count and it left the Cougar supporters envious, wondering when they’ll see a goal that pretty from their own team.
The Cougars began the weekend having won three straight at home and four of their last five. The Blazers came to town in the midst of a four-game losing streak.
“We started to click here tonight and yesterday, we talked about it all week and just came back to the basics,” said Franklin, the Blazers’ scoring leader with 25 points in 19 games, who finished the weekend with two goals and five assists. “I think we were getting too complicated so that was a good goal for us to play simple and it worked out pretty good.”
In both games the Cougars fumbled their passes, had very little forecheck intensity and were woefully outplayed on special teams – much to the delight of the Blazers, their long-standing WHL rivals, who thoroughly enjoyed their weekend all-expenses-paid trip to P.G. The Blazers scored on two of their four power-play chances Sunday, while the Cougars went 1-for-9.
A third-period power-play conversion from Cole Moberg spared the Cougars the embarrassment of being shut out by their WHL rivals on home ice. The Cats fired two more past 16-year-old rookie goalie Dylan Garand – the second goals of the season for Connor Bowie and Austin Crossley. But by that point, late in the third period, it was already a done deal.
“Obviously it wasn’t the weekend we wanted whatsoever and it starts from us, the leaders, all the way down to the 16-year-olds,” said Cougars captain Josh Curtis. “I don’t think any of us played well at all. I don’t think the effort was there. We weren’t fast enough. The first game we didn’t get enough shots and that put us down. We took some tough penalties. I thought we got some momentum and then took a penalty and the next thing we know it’s in the back of our net. Nothing was clicking this weekend.
“Maybe we thought them being at the bottom of standings, maybe we were too high, but it was one of those times when we didn’t come out ready and they were. It’s unacceptable, you can’t lose two straight at home like that.”
Sunday’s win allowed the Blazers (8-9-1-1, fourth in B.C. Division) to creep within three points of the Cougars (9-10-1-2, third in B.C. Division). Kamloops has played three fewer games than Prince George.
“We never look at the standings – we can’t because we get wrapped up where we have to get these points, have to do this. We just wanted to get our game better and get it to a place where we can move forward and I’m happy with this weekend,” said Blazers head coach Serge Lajoie.
“Both our goalies (Garand and Saturday starter Dylan Ferguson) made saves at key moments where it didn’t allow P.G. to get any momentum. It’s nice to have the luxury of going with a veteran guy in Ferguson and know that our guys love playing in front of him, and same thing with the kid (Garand). They rally around him and maybe put in extra effort to make sure he’s well-surrounded.”
The Cougars started Isaiah DiLaura in net and replaced him with Taylor Gauthier after the fourth Kamloops goal, 2:16 into the second period. DiLaura allowed four goals on 13 shots. Gauthier stopped 15 of 18 shots.
The Cougars put 28 shots on Garand, double their output from the 14 they managed on Ferguson the night before. In that Friday game, Blazers winger Jermaine Loewen polished his reputation as a Cougar-killer with two goals. He now has nine goals in his last 11 games against the Cougars. The visitors led 3-0 at that point and Franklin and Smith cashed in two more goals 20 seconds apart in the third period on a 5-on-3 power play to put it away.
Mike MacLean potted a rebound with 3:35 left to wreck Ferguson’s shutout.
Special teams also favoured the Blazers in that one. They went 3-for-7 on the power play while the Cougars went 0-for-2.
The Cougars host the Regina Pats in their next game Friday night, followed by a Saturday encounter with the Saskatoon Blades at CN Centre.
Guaranteed, there will be some soul-searching before the Cougars get back on the ice.
“It’s our job to sit down and go through it and figure out exactly why we kind of laid an egg this weekend,” said head coach Richard Matvichuk. “There’s no easy answer. It’s not fun to lose at home. We’ve been playing real well here and with a division rival like Kamloops it’s not good to lose two in a row to them, especially on home ice.”
