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09-25-2006, 09:14 AM
from: www.princegeorgecitizen.com
PRINCE GEORGE CITIZEN

by JIM SWANSON
Citizen Sports Editor
Apparently it's too soon to be calling the Prince George Cougars office to
register for participant club Memorial Cup ticket packages.
As was noted on media row, Saturday night's game against the Seattle
Thunderbirds could very well have been a statement game for this Cougars
team saddled with great expectations. The statement was there, but not what
was planned - a 4-2 loss said this team has some maturing to do before the
contender tag sticks.
"We put out the warning signs, but young players seem to want to learn the
lessons the hard way," said Cougars coach Mike Vandekamp, adding that he
warned his team not once but three times that Seattle would come out with a
better effort after losing by the same score Friday.
"The team that loses that first game is always more intense, hungrier, and
that if we were going to be successful we had to match that."
They didn't.
Some of the higher-profile Cougars players simply didn't play very well, or
at least as well as they did Friday.
"We weren't as sharp, weren't as enthusiastic or as intense," said
Vandekamp, whose team was outshot in every period, and 32-25 overall, on
Saturday. "We got outworked in more areas than we did the night before,
that's for sure. That was enough to make the difference on the scoreboard.
Our top line dominated the first game, in on all four of our goals, and the
second night they didn't. They were OK at best, and our expectations are for
them to be better than OK."
The doubleheader challenge the Cougars regularly face, suggested as some
sort of media fabrication, bit the home club again. Yes, again -
splitsville, thanks to a complacent showing.
"We talked about our lack of success in the doubleheaders, the stats - being
just a smidgen over .500 is never your goal," said Vandekamp.
"That's where we were last year in doubleheaders. It would have been
important for us to succeed in that first doubleheader and then build on
that, because we have 12 of them this year. We started with a mediocre
result.
"We didn't have our best team on the ice by any stretch, either, because
we'll have a different D corps when guys get healthy. One of our defencemen
(Eli Grossmann, see other story) had his pre-game meal with the other team,
then thrown to the wolves by playing for us."
Seattle scored the lone goal of the first period. Greg Scott's tremendous
individual effort ended with him skating through Ty Wishart as though he was
an average defenceman, not an NHL first-rounder, and tucking the puck behind
Real Cyr.
It was the all-20-year-old line that got the Cougars even on a second-period
power play. Wishart fed Brett Robertson, who made a sparkling cross-zone
pass to give Jared Walker a wide-open net.
But in the first minute of the third, the Cougars surrendered a goal two-men
short - but one Cyr should have stopped, a point blast that went five-hole
along the ice.
Robertson, the WHL's leading scorer with six points, connected on a power
play with 1:48 to go, but Jan Eberle of the T-birds tallied a long-range
empty-netter to end the drama.
With the way the penalties are overlapping, it's not only confusing to keep
a proper count, but it's unfair to hear the numbers and react as though
they're all full two-minute shortages. One series in the second period left
Seattle with two power plays, but totalling 24 seconds between them. Really,
the better stat would be to track the number of goals per minute of power
play time.
"I agree with that, because it was Eric Hunter who remarked in a meeting
that even though we were 20 per cent both nights, some of those power plays
were very short," said Vandekamp, whose team was 2-10 Saturday, while
Seattle was 2-12.
KITTY LITTER - Cougars rookie defenceman Lance Redden was suspended for one
game for his kneeing major Friday, a hit on Seattle's David Richard. T-birds
overager Rob Klinkhammer, who came off the bench to challenge Redden, was
also slapped with a one-game banishment... The Cougars practiced Sunday, but
will take today off and get back to work to prepare for games in Chilliwack
(Saturday) and Vancouver (Sunday). The next home action is Oct. 4 and 6,
with the Vancouver Giants making their first stop at CN Centre.