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10-11-2006, 06:41 AM
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Wednesday, October 11, 2006
www.princegeorgecitizen.com
Swift Current swamps Cats
by JIM SWANSON, Citizen Sports Editor
Oh, that’s right. Scott Bowles is still a goaltender on this team.
And, oh, right again, they have a new star forward in Devin Setoguchi.
One more — that’s correct, the Cougars have a first-round NHL draft pick, Ty Wishart, who is supposed to anchor the defence.
Those three, with a mix of other worthy pieces, might be enough on their own to win a WHL hockey game for the Prince George Cougars. But with more collective rust on that trio than a junked rail car, and little in the way of assistance from those around them, the Swift Current Broncos were sitting in the cat-bird seat Tuesday and cruised to a 4-0 victory at CN Centre.
Wishart hadn’t played in three games because of a concussion, while Setoguchi, acquired from Saskatoon last week, hadn’t seen game action all season because of lingering knee inflammation. Bowles, meanwhile, was on the ice for a meaningful contest for the first time since late March, when the Cats were bounced from the WHL playoffs by the Vancouver Giants.
On all three, the rust showed. Or perhaps they were just a reflection of their complacent teammates, who showed more jump in the third period after the coach peeled paint in the dressing room in the second intermission.
“Right now, we’re a group of individuals going in all sorts of individualistic directions,” said Cougars head coach Mike Vandekamp.
“That’s what we talked about (after the game). We have a lot of ‘I’m going to be a 40-goal guy,’ and ‘I’m going to be a 30-goal guy.’ At the end of the day, we’re a zero-goals-in-two-games team. If they need any more lessons about how good they are, there’s the lesson.
“We’re still pretty disorganized, especially on the back end. We’re patient enough to know what all the reasons are right now. We threw out a whole new lineup today and it didn’t work that well. It’ll be nice to get some things settled down and let guys get comfortable with each other.”
Vandekamp classified Bowles, Wishart and Setoguchi all as OK. Not stellar, not awful. Strikingly average.
“It’s going to have to keep going like that, because (injured defenceman Jesse) Dudas will have to go through his first game back, (Chris) Vanduynhoven will have to knock rust off and (Vladimir) Mihalik is getting rusty by the day,” said Vandekamp, his team now at 2-4-0-1.
“It will be a long, scrappy start for this crew. These lessons are good ones to learn early in the year, as long as you learn them.”
Dudas and Vanduynhoven are out with hand injuries. Mihalik has a separated shoulder.
Bowles, 20, will have anxious times now until Thursday’s deadline to be down to three overagers. Jared Walker sat out Tuesday to give Bowles his first shot at active duty, and it’s a certainty one of those two — Eric Hunter and Brett Robertson are safe — will be moving on in the next 48 hours.
“It was good to get back in the net — the team was expecting great things out of me and I wasn’t able to produce,” said Bowles, who made 17 saves but couldn’t be faulted for the loss — he can’t be expected to score goals, too.
“The team’s had excellent communication with me as the situation has unfolded. I’ve practiced and worked out hard, and I’ve done what I needed to do to be a player on this hockey team. It’s going to come down to numbers and where they need help right now.”
The Broncos put a 2-0 lead in their pockets after one period. The first goal was a gimme for David Stieler, the first in the WHL career of the Czech centre, because Cougars defenceman Curtis Patterson didn’t see a wounded rebound laying just outside the crease.
The second was pure penalty-killing breakdown as Daniel Rakos, another worthy import, chipped a loose puck over a sprawled Bowles. Rakos had all day to get two shots away.
Levi Nelson and Kyle Bortis added goals in the final 40 minutes of a game where the result never seemed in doubt. Kyle Moir made 26 saves for his second shutout of the season, his toughest stop on a third-period breakaway for Dana Tyrell. Had Tyrell scored, it would’ve cut the lead to 4-1.
The rust of this Cougars team goes beyond the recently healthy, or the recently rediscovered. Prince George has surrendered the first goal in five of seven games so far this season, begging the question of whether the Cougars are sufficiently ready to go at the opening faceoff.
“Here we are again, shut out at home again, our fourth-straight home loss, and we have to come back to the slow start,” said Hunter, the Cougars’ captain.
“It seems as soon as we get down we want to reinvent the systems, guys trying to get it done their own way. I’m sure most of the guys in the room will tell you they’re prepared, but obviously we’re not. Whether it’s from our leaders... I don’t know. When you start pouting and yipping at each other on the bench, you’re lost. We did some of that in the second period and I thought that’s what lost us the game.”
Adding to the frustration — the Cougars have surrendered 13 unanswered goals, nine of those by the powerful Vancouver Giants. A scoring drought in excess of 132 minutes had Vandekamp mixing his lines by the second period, looking for any spark he could find.
“We addressed that before the game, making sure we’re more ready and focused to start,” said Vandekamp. “Right now we don’t have a lot of confidence and you get going in a bad direction when you’re a guy struggling with that.”
The Cougars will leave Thursday for Alberta – good timing, for certain – where a six-game road trip starts Friday in Medicine Hat. The journey will take them through Lethbridge, Cranbrook, Kelowna and Tri-City in a nine-day span that ends with two games against the Americans.
KITTY LITTER – Announced attendance was a sickly 2,477. That’s just 24 more souls than the all-time low, a Jan. 4 game last season against Kelowna that drew 2,453... A hit by Prab Rai on Dane Crowley early in the second period knocked the veteran defenceman out of the game with what looked like a separated shoulder... Dean Chynoweth, the head coach and GM of the Broncos, was not on the bench Tuesday because he was at the GM meetings in Calgary. Dave Hunchak, the assistant coach who has worked with the national junior team as a video coach, took over... The Broncos were 2-10 on the power play. The Cats were ugh-for-nine... Vancouver Giants head coach Don Hay did not record his 300th WHL head coaching win a week ago at CN Centre, as was reported. The Giants mistakenly made that claim, but statistics now show he reached the milestone on the weekend, not in Prince George... Former Cougars goaltender Kevin Swanson, an all-star after being dealt to Kelowna in 1998, is now the goaltending consultant for the Broncos... The Giants traded goaltender Tommy Tartaglione, 18, to the Regina Pats on Tuesday for a fourth-round bantam pick.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
www.princegeorgecitizen.com
Swift Current swamps Cats
by JIM SWANSON, Citizen Sports Editor
Oh, that’s right. Scott Bowles is still a goaltender on this team.
And, oh, right again, they have a new star forward in Devin Setoguchi.
One more — that’s correct, the Cougars have a first-round NHL draft pick, Ty Wishart, who is supposed to anchor the defence.
Those three, with a mix of other worthy pieces, might be enough on their own to win a WHL hockey game for the Prince George Cougars. But with more collective rust on that trio than a junked rail car, and little in the way of assistance from those around them, the Swift Current Broncos were sitting in the cat-bird seat Tuesday and cruised to a 4-0 victory at CN Centre.
Wishart hadn’t played in three games because of a concussion, while Setoguchi, acquired from Saskatoon last week, hadn’t seen game action all season because of lingering knee inflammation. Bowles, meanwhile, was on the ice for a meaningful contest for the first time since late March, when the Cats were bounced from the WHL playoffs by the Vancouver Giants.
On all three, the rust showed. Or perhaps they were just a reflection of their complacent teammates, who showed more jump in the third period after the coach peeled paint in the dressing room in the second intermission.
“Right now, we’re a group of individuals going in all sorts of individualistic directions,” said Cougars head coach Mike Vandekamp.
“That’s what we talked about (after the game). We have a lot of ‘I’m going to be a 40-goal guy,’ and ‘I’m going to be a 30-goal guy.’ At the end of the day, we’re a zero-goals-in-two-games team. If they need any more lessons about how good they are, there’s the lesson.
“We’re still pretty disorganized, especially on the back end. We’re patient enough to know what all the reasons are right now. We threw out a whole new lineup today and it didn’t work that well. It’ll be nice to get some things settled down and let guys get comfortable with each other.”
Vandekamp classified Bowles, Wishart and Setoguchi all as OK. Not stellar, not awful. Strikingly average.
“It’s going to have to keep going like that, because (injured defenceman Jesse) Dudas will have to go through his first game back, (Chris) Vanduynhoven will have to knock rust off and (Vladimir) Mihalik is getting rusty by the day,” said Vandekamp, his team now at 2-4-0-1.
“It will be a long, scrappy start for this crew. These lessons are good ones to learn early in the year, as long as you learn them.”
Dudas and Vanduynhoven are out with hand injuries. Mihalik has a separated shoulder.
Bowles, 20, will have anxious times now until Thursday’s deadline to be down to three overagers. Jared Walker sat out Tuesday to give Bowles his first shot at active duty, and it’s a certainty one of those two — Eric Hunter and Brett Robertson are safe — will be moving on in the next 48 hours.
“It was good to get back in the net — the team was expecting great things out of me and I wasn’t able to produce,” said Bowles, who made 17 saves but couldn’t be faulted for the loss — he can’t be expected to score goals, too.
“The team’s had excellent communication with me as the situation has unfolded. I’ve practiced and worked out hard, and I’ve done what I needed to do to be a player on this hockey team. It’s going to come down to numbers and where they need help right now.”
The Broncos put a 2-0 lead in their pockets after one period. The first goal was a gimme for David Stieler, the first in the WHL career of the Czech centre, because Cougars defenceman Curtis Patterson didn’t see a wounded rebound laying just outside the crease.
The second was pure penalty-killing breakdown as Daniel Rakos, another worthy import, chipped a loose puck over a sprawled Bowles. Rakos had all day to get two shots away.
Levi Nelson and Kyle Bortis added goals in the final 40 minutes of a game where the result never seemed in doubt. Kyle Moir made 26 saves for his second shutout of the season, his toughest stop on a third-period breakaway for Dana Tyrell. Had Tyrell scored, it would’ve cut the lead to 4-1.
The rust of this Cougars team goes beyond the recently healthy, or the recently rediscovered. Prince George has surrendered the first goal in five of seven games so far this season, begging the question of whether the Cougars are sufficiently ready to go at the opening faceoff.
“Here we are again, shut out at home again, our fourth-straight home loss, and we have to come back to the slow start,” said Hunter, the Cougars’ captain.
“It seems as soon as we get down we want to reinvent the systems, guys trying to get it done their own way. I’m sure most of the guys in the room will tell you they’re prepared, but obviously we’re not. Whether it’s from our leaders... I don’t know. When you start pouting and yipping at each other on the bench, you’re lost. We did some of that in the second period and I thought that’s what lost us the game.”
Adding to the frustration — the Cougars have surrendered 13 unanswered goals, nine of those by the powerful Vancouver Giants. A scoring drought in excess of 132 minutes had Vandekamp mixing his lines by the second period, looking for any spark he could find.
“We addressed that before the game, making sure we’re more ready and focused to start,” said Vandekamp. “Right now we don’t have a lot of confidence and you get going in a bad direction when you’re a guy struggling with that.”
The Cougars will leave Thursday for Alberta – good timing, for certain – where a six-game road trip starts Friday in Medicine Hat. The journey will take them through Lethbridge, Cranbrook, Kelowna and Tri-City in a nine-day span that ends with two games against the Americans.
KITTY LITTER – Announced attendance was a sickly 2,477. That’s just 24 more souls than the all-time low, a Jan. 4 game last season against Kelowna that drew 2,453... A hit by Prab Rai on Dane Crowley early in the second period knocked the veteran defenceman out of the game with what looked like a separated shoulder... Dean Chynoweth, the head coach and GM of the Broncos, was not on the bench Tuesday because he was at the GM meetings in Calgary. Dave Hunchak, the assistant coach who has worked with the national junior team as a video coach, took over... The Broncos were 2-10 on the power play. The Cats were ugh-for-nine... Vancouver Giants head coach Don Hay did not record his 300th WHL head coaching win a week ago at CN Centre, as was reported. The Giants mistakenly made that claim, but statistics now show he reached the milestone on the weekend, not in Prince George... Former Cougars goaltender Kevin Swanson, an all-star after being dealt to Kelowna in 1998, is now the goaltending consultant for the Broncos... The Giants traded goaltender Tommy Tartaglione, 18, to the Regina Pats on Tuesday for a fourth-round bantam pick.