Taylor Gauthier couldn’t have dreamt a of better performance for his debut at the Scotiabank Saddledome.
The Calgary native stepped onto the ice at the Dome for the first time since he was six and did everything in his power to backstop his Prince George Cougars against the team he grew up cheering for, the Calgary Hitmen.
Despite his 39 saves, the Cougars fell 2-1 to the Hitmen in a shootout Sunday night.
Gauthier was magnificent from the first shot all the way until the last.
Having finally stopped shaking from nervousness before the game, Gauthier was tested four shifts in, when the Hitmen’s two leading scorers teamed up for a one-timer.
Jakob Stukel had the puck on the half-wall and lasered a pass to the streaking Matteo Gennaro, who was dive-bombing on net. Gennaro got a stick on the pass, but Gauthier’s stick flew over at the last second, swatting the puck to the corner.
Last time these two teams hooked up, Gauthier was between the pipes in Prince George Oct. 10. He was only required to make 16 saves for his first career win in the 7-1 cakewalk.
That marked the lowest point of the Hitmen’s season; they drove eight-and-a-half hours to lose their fifth-straight, and failed to muster more than five shots on net in the first and third period.
There was no resemblance from that Hitmen squad two weeks ago and the team that stepped out on the ice tonight.
In the first period alone, they nearly toppled their shot total from the first meeting with, when they fired 13 shots at the rookie, most of which were Grade-A chances.
On the penalty kill, newly anointed captain Gennaro intercepted a dee-to-dee pass at his blue line. Sprinting towards Gauthier, Gennaro had a clean shot at the rookie.
He elected to hold the puck, deking towards his backhand, but was turned away by the left pad. Gennaro led the Hitmen (4-7-1-0) with eight shots, several coming from high-scoring areas, but could not foil the 6-foot-1 Gauthier.
Gennaro wasn’t the only one swarming the net all night long. After an impressive training camp and pre-season, the 17-year-old Tristen Nielsen has begun to show signs of heating up.
Nielsen was in attack mode on the penalty kill late in the first. He was deep in the Cougars’ zone when he forced the turnover behind the net. Skating to the wall, he flipped a backhanded saucer pass that floated over a pair of Cougar sticks onto Mark Kastelic’s tape, but he fired it off Gauthier’s left pad.
He was also responsible for putting the only puck past the 2016 10th overall pick.
Nielsen wound up with the puck at the top of the zone and unleashed a shot, hitting Gauthier in the glove. Gauthier caught most of it, but not all of it, as the puck bounced in the air, up and over him, trickling into the back of the net. Nielsen’s second of the season came at the 16:57 mark of the first.
“Nielsen is coming along. He’s extremely committed to his game and I like that about him,” said Hitmen Head Coach Dallas Ferguson. “He’s always asking us how to get better and that’s the kind of kids we like to coach.”
The Cougars (4-5-2-2) tied it early in the second when Josh Curtis came roaring down the left wing with noting but daylight between him, the defender and Schneider. Opting to shoot, he cleanly burned one upstairs past Schneider’s glove for his first on the season 57 seconds into the second.
That’s when the goaltending battle between the second-youngest in the league and the eighth-oldest really began to take off.
In the second, the Hitmen were throwing more traffic at Gauthier, but he was still able to follow the puck through the maze of bodies.
On the other end, Nikita Popugaev started unleashing one-timers from the left hash on Schneider. First, he tried going blocker-side, nothing. Then, he tried to rip one past his glove, but Schneider remained one step quicker.
Before the end of the second, Cougars’ captain Brogan O’Brien patiently toe-dragged around the steady Vladislav Yeryomenko, before snapping one on net form the slot. But once again, Schneider was there to turn him away for one of his 33 saves.
It began to feel like an anything you can do I can do better, game in front of the 5,809 fans and 30 Gauthier supporters.
On the other end of the rink, Andrei Grishakov was looking to continue his strong start by breaking the tie late in the third.
Gauthier was completely out of position when a rebound opportunity came loose to Grishakov at the side of the net. Wasting no time, he fired the puck into the barren net, but somehow, Gauthier threw his glove in front of the puck, saving a sure goal.
Grishakov was mind-blown.
The best of Gauthier was still to come with less than a minute remaining in the third when he channeled his inner Dominik Hasek.
“I’m not really sure how I make some of my saves sometimes. I just hope that my skill and flexibility pays off,” said Gauthier, who will be joining Jackson van de Leest on Team Canada for the U-17 World Challenge. “It certainly did tonight.”
Once again, Gauthier was down-and-out after making a pair of brilliant saves, when he found himself face-down in the blue paint with the puck on the stick of Luke Coleman. Coleman pulled the trigger, but hit Gauthier in the back right elbow. Lucky and good at the same time, Gauthier was bailed out by the iron, when Coleman sent the rebound off the pipe.
Following his brilliance, his goals against average improved to 2.95 with a .891 save percentage — rare WHL dominance by a youngster.
His work caught the eye of Schneider, who remembers what it was like to be 16 and play in the Dome for the first time.
“He stood on his head tonight. I was 16 once and I know what was going through my mind. Playing in the Dome was the most memorable game for me; there are so many people here, it’s a huge rink and you grow up watching games here. It was good for him to have a good showing when he gets the chance to play here,” said Schneider.
The Cougars began overtime on a 4-on-3 man advantage when Schneider delivered his candidate for highlight of the night.
A good penalty kill can always be linked to strong play between the pipes, and Schneider was at his best once again, turning away 14 third-period and three overtime shots, as the Hitmen went a perfect 10-for-10 with a man in the box.
Working the puck around the perimeter, the Cougars’ third-leading scorer Aaron Boyd tried to sneak in a cross-crease pass, but was poke-checked by Schneider into the slot. Waiting there, was O’Brien, who had the top shelf picked out, but was robbed by the Hitmen netminder, to force a shootout.
It was the first shootout for the Hitmen this season and second time for the Cougars, who lost to the Edmonton Oil Kings one night earlier in the skills contest.
Jake Kryski shot first for the Hitmen. He sped in, worked to get the forehand open and beat the rookie upstairs.
The Cougars’ leader in shooting percentage, Vladislav Mikhalchuk, went next. He took his time entering the zone, waltzing back-and-forth, before out-waiting Schneider and scoring on the forehand.
Stukel led the Hitmen with a pair of shootout goals last season and responded in the third round by backing Gauthier deep into his net, deking and shooting, to put the Hitmen up.
Needing a goal, Detroit Red Wings prospect Dennis Cholowski made Schneider bite hard on the backhand, as he moved to the opening and shoveled in the tying goal.
In the fifth round, alternate captain Jake Bean took his time entering the Cougars zone, as he worked to the glove side of Gauthier, sniping glove side.
“Shootouts are kind of a crapshoot. There are a lot of skilled guys in this league, so you just want to do your best, compete and hopefully come out on top,” said Schneider.
It turned out to be the winner as Schneider won the goalie battle when Jared Bethune tried to go 5-hole, but was denied, to improve to 6-2 lifetime in the shootout.
“We will take the win. The big thing for us was rebounding with our effort from Friday. We weren’t happy with that and I thought we competed much harder, we got to the inside and created scoring chances. Hopefully we get a few more to go in,” said Ferguson.
Things are beginning to turn for the Hitmen following their 1-5-1-0 start to their season. For Ferguson, he focuses on seven-game chunks to his season. Having a less-than-ideal start, the Hitmen have responded and now sit 2-2-1-0 in the second seven-game set this season.
They will look to keep things going, when the Hitmen host the Spokane Chiefs Tuesday night at the Saddledome. The Chiefs haven’t visited the Dome since Oct. 29, 2015, when the Chiefs doubled up the Hitmen 6-3.
The Hitmen game operations crew kept up with the theme that swept across the nation this past week as the country mourned, reminisced and remembered the life of The Tragically Hip’s iconic frontman Gord Downie. Throughout the evening, they cranked out nine of the Hip’s greatest hits, as the Hitmen were playing their first home game since the singer’s unfortunate passing.
