Sput
03-28-2006, 01:35 AM
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Cougars far from perfect, but gaining confidence
by JIM SWANSON Citizen Sports Editor
The Vancouver Giants are exhibiting dangerous playoff behaviour — they are allowing an underdog team, the Prince George Cougars, to stick around, gain confidence, and make noise.
Despite a lopsided season series against the Giants, the Cougars were clear underdogs coming into this first-round series, now knotted at a game apiece after the teams traded shutout wins in Vancouver on the weekend.
Game 3 goes tonight at CN Centre, and all of a sudden it's Prince George, and not the Western Conference's first seed, holding home-ice advantage.
"The Giants get a lot of coverage, a lot of press, as a big-city market, and that's a very good team," said Cougars head coach Mike Vandekamp.
"I think that, no matter what, these young guys didn't 100 per cent believe that they could win, and now we know that. That could create a really powerful team back in our rink. I hope we can build from that."
The Giants have the strength on the blueline to control the Cougars offence, and have done that so far, limiting Prince George to 39 shots on goal in 120 minutes of hockey. Vancouver also has tremendous depth and skill up front, but that has translated into just two goals (plus an empty-netter) on brick wall Scott Bowles.
What has to concern the Giants is that the Cougars are all-square, yet they haven't played all that well.
"We didn't play our perfect game (Saturday), and I think the shot total says that," said Vandekamp.
"I thought we kept them to the outside fairly well. They did get to the inside a few times and Scotty made some stops, but we can still play better."
The bonuses for the Cougars come from two issues — they stole home-ice advantage without scoring a power play goal, and without really doing anything to get under goaltender Dustin Slade's skin. Slade lost his composure on his own, with virtually no provocation, because the Cats have spent precious little time in Slade's vicinity.
"The frustration (Slade, Gilbert Brule and J.D. Watt) showed at the end of (Saturday's) game is a little notch to say we've managed to disrupt their focus, at least momentarily," said Vandekamp.
"But Don Hay is too good of a coach and that's too good of a team to not have that totally back together by Game 3. These are young athletes with lots of emotion. It will be a brand new game and you have to get over it. They'll be refocused and we will be, too. You have to get over it, that's part of what the playoffs is."
Neither team has been able to manage success on the power play, combining for 21 fruitless chances through two games. Part of the reason is solid penalty killing, but a good portion is also attributed to shoddy passing and a lack of effort on both sides.
"We have to create more offence than we did and have to get our power play going still," said Vandekamp. "We've got to control the play more than we have. We haven't contained them in their end of the rink nearly as much as we've wanted to, so there are still lots of things we can do better. We want to get better from one game to the next and we can still improve."
Cougars far from perfect, but gaining confidence
by JIM SWANSON Citizen Sports Editor
The Vancouver Giants are exhibiting dangerous playoff behaviour — they are allowing an underdog team, the Prince George Cougars, to stick around, gain confidence, and make noise.
Despite a lopsided season series against the Giants, the Cougars were clear underdogs coming into this first-round series, now knotted at a game apiece after the teams traded shutout wins in Vancouver on the weekend.
Game 3 goes tonight at CN Centre, and all of a sudden it's Prince George, and not the Western Conference's first seed, holding home-ice advantage.
"The Giants get a lot of coverage, a lot of press, as a big-city market, and that's a very good team," said Cougars head coach Mike Vandekamp.
"I think that, no matter what, these young guys didn't 100 per cent believe that they could win, and now we know that. That could create a really powerful team back in our rink. I hope we can build from that."
The Giants have the strength on the blueline to control the Cougars offence, and have done that so far, limiting Prince George to 39 shots on goal in 120 minutes of hockey. Vancouver also has tremendous depth and skill up front, but that has translated into just two goals (plus an empty-netter) on brick wall Scott Bowles.
What has to concern the Giants is that the Cougars are all-square, yet they haven't played all that well.
"We didn't play our perfect game (Saturday), and I think the shot total says that," said Vandekamp.
"I thought we kept them to the outside fairly well. They did get to the inside a few times and Scotty made some stops, but we can still play better."
The bonuses for the Cougars come from two issues — they stole home-ice advantage without scoring a power play goal, and without really doing anything to get under goaltender Dustin Slade's skin. Slade lost his composure on his own, with virtually no provocation, because the Cats have spent precious little time in Slade's vicinity.
"The frustration (Slade, Gilbert Brule and J.D. Watt) showed at the end of (Saturday's) game is a little notch to say we've managed to disrupt their focus, at least momentarily," said Vandekamp.
"But Don Hay is too good of a coach and that's too good of a team to not have that totally back together by Game 3. These are young athletes with lots of emotion. It will be a brand new game and you have to get over it. They'll be refocused and we will be, too. You have to get over it, that's part of what the playoffs is."
Neither team has been able to manage success on the power play, combining for 21 fruitless chances through two games. Part of the reason is solid penalty killing, but a good portion is also attributed to shoddy passing and a lack of effort on both sides.
"We have to create more offence than we did and have to get our power play going still," said Vandekamp. "We've got to control the play more than we have. We haven't contained them in their end of the rink nearly as much as we've wanted to, so there are still lots of things we can do better. We want to get better from one game to the next and we can still improve."