The Kamloops Blazers might have groaned a few months ago when they saw the WHL schedule was taking them to Prince George for two games in less than two days, right after a date in Kamloops with the Prince Albert Raiders.
The way the Blazers have dominated proceedings the past couple years at CN Centre, they needn’t have worried.
On Vegas Night Saturday they ran the table and left the Cougars flat broke – dealing out a 3-1 loss in front of 3,156 witnesses which marked the fourth time in four tries they’ve beaten the Cats this season. It was their ninth straight win at CN Centre dating back to March 2017.
Losers of six straight and 13 of their last 16 games, the Blazers ended their slide with a thorough beat-down of the Cougars. In a clash of WHL B.C. Division rivals that lacked flow but had plenty of emotion, they got the better of the Cats by simply outworking them.
“Our team has been pretty good here and we had a lot of energy and a lot of jump and that was big for us coming off six losses and tough defeats,” said Blazers captain Jermaine Loewen. “We’ve been pretty good against them here but I didn’t realize it was (nine consecutive wins), that’s crazy.
“You’re always engaged against them and there were a lot of skirmishes after every whistle,” he added. “It’s a battle and it’s fun. It’s every shift. The refs let us kind of get at it and there were some big hits.”
None were bigger than one Loewen took six minutes into the game when he met the business end of Mike Maclean’s shoulder and was sent sprawling to the ice.
The Blazers have struggled with their defensive-zone coverage the past couple months, which sent them into a tailspin and head coach Serge Lajoie hopes the improvement they showed Saturday taking away scoring chances and protecting their goalie will be the start of a trend.
“We’ve been preaching the last two or three weeks to bring a workman attitude to every game and it’s not always going to go our way but it really has to be entrenched in our game plan,” said Lajoie. “That requires guys sacrificing a bit of what they want to do and how they want to play for the benefit of what’s best and that’s putting pucks in areas where we can apply pressure and we can make it hard for the other team to come up the ice.”
The Blazers showed no signs of bus legs after the six-hour trip to Prince George that started not long after they lost 4-1 to the league-leading Raiders. They scored first, taking advantage of a 2-on-1 break after Cougars defenceman Cole Moberg got caught pinching at the far blueline. Kobe Mohr fed the puck over to Kyrell Sopotyk and the 17-year-old from Aberdeen, Sask., buried it from just outside Taylor Gauthier’s doorstep with 8:21 gone. That came right after Cougars winger Vladislav Mikhalchuk came close on a partial breakaway.
“It wasn’t pretty but our guys were disciplined in playing the game plan,” said Lajoie. “We played with a lot of pace (against the Raiders) for a good 50 minutes and it took us a while to get going but once we did we seemed to have decent energy. For whatever reason, we seem to find the energy in this building.”
In a scrambly second period the Cougars couldn’t seem to do anything right, fumbling away the puck at just about every opportunity. Connor Zary made it a 2-0 game when he buried a rebound in front while falling backwards after Loewen rattled a shot off the goalpost.
As badly as the Cougars were playing, they got back into the game late in the second period with a power-play goal. Jackson Leppard forced Orrin Centazzo into a holding penalty while carrying the puck out from the side boards and it took just 27 seconds of the penalty for Josh Maser to cut the Kamloops lead to 2-1. He was in perfect position screening goalie Dylan Ferguson when Ryan Schoettler let go a shot from the point. Maser pounced on the loose puck, spun around and dumped it into the open cage for his team-leading 17th goal of the season.
In the third period, the Cougars continued to struggle on offence, given very little room to operate, and they drew a crowd of Blazers whenever they tried to break through into the Kamloops zone. The backbreaker came 8:54 into the period when Martin Lang stole the puck and took a sharp-angle shot from the right-wing wall that caught a sliver of net behind Gauthier, still down on his knees after he had to make two quick saves.
“It’s not good enough, we’ve lost four in a row to this team and eventually you have to show up and compete to the level it takes to win hockey games and tonight we didn’t do it again,” said Cougars head coach Richard Matvichuk, pointing the finger of blame directly at his older players.
“If our best guys aren’t leading the charge then this team ain’t going anywhere. They know who they are and they have to play better. Right from the drop of the puck we didn’t compete, we didn’t want it. I’m not sure if they thought it was going to be an easy night but if we’re not willing to work and be determined and sacrifice for each other we’re not going to win many hockey games.”
Cougars winger Reid Perepeluk played his first game since Dec. 16. He missed nine games and lost 25 pounds while he was sidelined with mononucleosis. Perepeluk brought surges of energy to the Cougars’ fourth line, playing with MacLean and Connor Bowie, and came close to scoring his first of the season during his second shift early in the game when he jumped on a loose puck in the slot after Ferguson kicked out the rebound of Bowie’s shot.
Like the rest of the Cougars, Perepeluk had a hard time explaining why his team came out so flat playing in their own barn against their closest WHL rivals. It was a far cry from the week before when they dominated the Kelowna Rockets in two games at CN Centre.
“We were moving and making plays and just giving more of a 100 per cent effort (against Kelowna) than we were tonight,” said Perepeluk.
“There’s a lot of guys in the dressing room, including me, that could have given more. We just have to be ready to go. If we start focusing tonight on the opportunities and visualizing the game then I think definitely we’ll have a better shot. We’re a better team than these guys.”
