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Monday, March 27, 2006
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Alive and kicking
Cats and Giants even in series
by JIM SWANSON, Citizen Sports Editor
VANCOUVER — It's time to wake up, Prince George — the Cougars have a 1997-style upset on their minds.
The underdog Cougars are all square with the Vancouver Giants, those 100-point monsters who are the top seed in the Western Conference, after a formulaic 2-0 victory Saturday at Pacific Coliseum.
Formulaic? You bet — score on the few opportunities presented, limit mistakes, and let goaltender Scott Bowles slam the door.
In the process, the Cougars have driven the short-fused members of the Giants — already — to levels of undisciplined frustration. The Giants now have to win a game in Prince George — something they haven't done in almost six months. That effort will start with Game 3 on Tuesday at CN Centre. Game 4 is slated for the next night.
"We knew Prince George was going to bounce back," Giants coach Don Hay said Saturday.
"We made a couple turnovers that they took advantage of, and they got good goaltending. They played hard and battled hard. Whenever you're the road team you want to come in and get the split — they were able to accomplish that, so now it's up to us to respond."
Asked about having to win at least one game in Prince George, where the Cougars won three of four meetings in the regular season, Hay said this: "Obviously it's a big challenge, but I believe we were one of the best road teams in the league (a WHL-best 23-9-0-4 mark in the regular season). We have a lot of confidence playing on the road."
Really, this is a series that could be 2-0 for either team. The first two games, including Vancouver's tentative 3-0 victory on Friday, were of the 1-0 variety until late in the respective third periods. The team in front got the insurance goal with mere minutes to go in both contests, and Vancouver added an empty-netter in the opener.
Two games, two shutouts, four goals (with both goaltenders on the ice), and no power play success for either club on a combined 21 chances. There have been nearly as many disallowed goals (three — one for the Cougars, two for Vancouver, both of those Saturday night) as there have been allowable ones. And, true to the usual playoff form, the team scoring the first goal has won both games.
Kalvin Sagert, off a first-period rush, and Eric Hunter, completing a two-on-one in the third, handled the scoring for the Cats, who were outshot 39-20.
The Cougars, wearing their third jerseys after dropping Game 1 while skating in white, rode the steady work of Bowles. While that may seem like a heavy workload, Bowles mostly saw outside offerings and rarely faced rebounds as his defence methodically cleared danger.
The best save by Bowles, without question, was a glove snare on Giants sniper Mitch Bartley in the third. He also used a pokecheck and the tip of his right shoulder to deny Michal Repik when Prince George was still clinging to a one-goal lead.
"Our team takes great pride in shot-blocking, and if I didn't see the shot, it didn't get through," said Bowles, who has a .952 save percentage through two games.
"There were times I sat back when they had great traffic and said, 'Man, I hope it hits something, because I don't see it.' And, luckily for me, it did."
The Cougars had a goal called off Friday when Colin Patterson punched it in with his glove. Giants forward Kyle Lamb looked like a volleyball player tipping a ball over the net on a waved-off second period goal, and in the third J.D. Watt was called for interfering on Sagert as the Giants got another puck across the line.
The Giants' best chance to turn the game came late in the second period when the Cougars were down two men for 19 seconds, but they didn't manage so much as a shot on goal.
"We didn't play our best game again, but our penalty kill was good," said Cougars head coach Mike Vandekamp.
"It's a good win for our team. I thought we handled the adversity of having penalties fairly well. For a relatively inexperienced playoff team, we didn't get rattled and we stayed focused and didn't panic.
"We kept them to the outside pretty well, but we can play better and the shot total says that. We have to get more offence going — we were opportunistic. We only had four or five chances and we scored on two of them."
After Hunter's insurance goal — incidentally, the only marker managed by a forward on either team other than Gilbert Brule's empty-netter Friday — the Giants let their composure slip. Vancouver netminder Dustin Slade, whose fuse is never far from the flame, was called for slashing and spent much of the penalty either yelling at referee Cory McLean or looking for another ankle to harm.
Then, in the final minute, Brule tackled Myles Zimmer from behind and then turtled when the Cougars captain wanted to settle the score mano a mano. Brule likely declined due to a wonky right shoulder that has him at less than 100 per cent, but even some of the Giants fans were heard to heckle Brule for going ostrich.
"I was just trying to battle as hard as I could, and I took him down... I don't know," was Brule's explanation.
"I was down on the ground because I fell, so there wasn't much I could do. It's always tough when you get down in your own building and you get calls that don't go your way. We have to keep our composure."
"Old habits are hard to die," Hay said about the composure of Slade and Brule, who have been known to lose their tempers before. "Our team has to learn to stick to it right to the end."
