There was no blaze of glory waiting in Kamloops for the Prince George Cougars.
Misery would be a better way to describe the fate the Cougars suffered Saturday when they took on the Kamloops Blazers in the second game of a weekend WHL roadtrip.
Nathan Behm led the Blazers with two goals and an assist, Tommie Lafreniere collected three assists and goalie Dylan Ernst blocked 40 of 43 shots to nail down a 6-3 victory over the Cats.
The 6-3 outcome was identical to that the Cougars suffered Friday night when they lost to the Kelowna Rockets.
Not what you would expect from the first-place team in the BC Division taking on divisional opponents.
Penalties plagued the Cougars (24-12-3-2) and the Blazers (15-21-2-1) scored three of their six goals on power play chances.
Saturday’s loss, combined with the Victoria Royals’ 6-2 win over the Tri-City Americans left the Cougars and Royals tied in points, each with 53.
Arseni Anisimov, the Cougar’s 17-year-old Russian import defenceman, was first to get on the scoresheet, blasting in his second of the season on a feed from Lee Shurgot.
The Blazers tied it on a 5-on-3 power play. Czechian native Matteo Koci connected with a point shot that got through the equipment of Josh Ravensbergen.
Late in period, Blazers centre Jordan Keller took the puck from Koci and buried his 21st of the season into the Cougar net to give the home side the lead.
The teams were playing 4-on-4 eight minutes into the second period when Behm took advantage of the extra ice and got free for his 22nd of the year which made it a 3-1 count.
The Cougars’ penalty troubles continued in the third period and once again they got burned. Borya Vallis was in the box a minute into a double-minor penalty for high-sticking when Koehn Ziemmer got caught tripping, and it did not take long in the two-man advantage for the Blazers to cash in.
Emmitt Finney had a tap-in for his 23rd of the season to make it a 4-1 game at 11:16 of the third and the teams were playing 5-on-4 when Max Sullivan connected for his fifth goal.
Ziemmer ended a nine-game scoring drought late in the game, scoring on a Cougars’ power play with six minutes on the clock but Behm provided the dagger not long after that.
Valis scored a shorthanded goal with 1:29 left and that’s close it got.
The Cougars outshot the Blazers 43-37 and had an edge in scoring chances but the scoreboard was all that mattered to Blazers fans in a crowd of 3,747 at Sandman Centre
The Cougars boarded the bus back to Prince George right after the game and they won’t get a lot of practice time to work out the bugs, heading into a tough weekend on the road. They visit the Spokane Chiefs on Friday, then head to Everett to take on the league-leading Silvertips.
Spokane defeated Don Nachbaur’s Wenatchee Wild 12-2 Saturday in Wenatchee. Chiefs right winger Andrew Cristall, in his second game since the trade that brought him from Kelowna, ad a seven-point game with three goals and four assists.
