It was country night at the Sandman Centre on Saturday. If the Blazers were the mechanical bull, they wasted little time bucking off the visiting Prince George Cougars.
The Blazers scored five goals in the first 10 minutes en route to a 6-3 victory and a weekend sweep of the Cougars. Max Martin, facing the team that originally drafted him, started the festivities with his 12th of the season.
23 seconds later, Prince George’s Ryan Schoettler was tagged with a double-minor after catching Kyrell Sopotyk with a high-stick.
Nine seconds into the man-advantage, Zane Franklin tapped home his 28th goal of the season. 75 seconds later, Orrin Centazzo scored his third goal of the weekend and 42nd of the campaign, the most any Blazer has scored in a single season since Erik Christensen in 2002-03.
Brodi Stuart’s eighth of the season was the final straw for Cougars’ rookie Tyler Brennan.
“It felt pretty good,” Stuart added post-game. “Obviously, it felt pretty nice coming off two wins on the weekend and I think we played pretty good both games so it felt good.”
After a goaltending change, Logan Stankoven introduced Prince George’s Taylor Gauthier to the action with his 28th of the season. The Kamloops native is now just one goal back of Rob Brown for the Blazers’ goal-scoring record by a rookie in a single season.
“We’ve really struggled to score against this team,” noted Blazers’ head coach Shaun Clouston. “To put up six, back-to-back, I give the guys a lot of credit.”
Leading up to the weekend series, the Blazers had been stymied by Taylor Gauthier and the Cougars. Prince George had led the season series 3-2 while conceding just 11 goals to the WHL’s second-best offence in those five games.
“We thought that was going to be really important,” added Clouston. “Make sure we play our game [and] set the bar really high.”
Vladislav Mikhalchuk capitalized on a 5-on-3 with his 11th of the season early in the second period to put the visitors on the board.
Quinn Schmiemann scored the final Blazers’ goal after his seeing-eye shot bounced its way past Gauthier. The defenceman’s marker was the team’s third powerplay goal of the game and fifth of the weekend, boosting the team’s percentage to 27.6 percent, second-best in the WHL behind Everett.
Majid Kaddoura (4) and Brendan Boyle (3) closed out the game with goals in the final five minutes, two relatively small deformities for Clouston.
“I give them a lot of credit because they didn’t lay down, they fought back hard. They got a couple of late ones which give them some confidence; we got them a couple of more times at the end of the season but overall, we’ll take it.”
The Blazers and Cougars will face off twice in March at the Sandman Centre. Kamloops now leads the season series 4-3 and sit nine points ahead of Vancouver for first in the B.C. Division. Each team has 10 games left on the schedule and will meet on Wednesday, February 4th in Kamloops.
