A bit of puck luck would have been welcome.
The Freightliner Cougars settled for a 5-5 tie with Kitimat in their opening game of the Up The Creek Garment Company peewee rep hockey tournament. In the contest, played Friday morning at Kin 1, the Cats had a 4-2 lead when the puck dropped to start the third period.
In the third, Kitimat kept storming the Prince George net and got rewarded. From the Cougars' perspective, every Kitimat scoring opportunity seemed to end with the puck just across the goal line.
"All three of theirs [in the third period] were really scrambly goals," said Freightliner coach Glen Whitehead. "Not one was off of a play or a nice pass. All three were crash the net, and two made it across the line by less than inches. Our guys still can't believe it.
"My boys learned again that the game is 60 minutes," Whitehead added. "But Kitimat is a very good team so it's not like it was a letdown."
Kitimat scored the tying goal with 5:44 left to play.
Tyson Ghostkeeper, Mateo Albinati, Mattias Urbanski, Dylan Krahn and Cameron Prouse were the Prince George goalscorers, while Mathew Ens was between the pipes.
Given the fact his team hadn't seen game action in a while, Whitehead was satisfied with the outcome.
"We hadn't played in excess of a month so I was pretty pleased with the result," he said. "I was actually a little bit concerned with rust, with that much time off, so they actually played pretty well. And we definitely carried the play overall."
On Friday night, the Cougars were back on Kin 1 ice for a game against Terrace and won 10-2. Ghostkeeper scored five of the Freightliner goals and Urbanski had three. Darian Long and Krahn also found the mark for the Cats, who got winning goaltending from Jacob Sweet.
Today, the Cougars will complete round robin with a 10 a.m. game (Kin 2) against Fort St. John, the pre-tournament favourite.
Semifinal playoff games are scheduled for 2:45 p.m. and 5 p.m., both at Kin 1. Sunday's gold-medal final will start at 9:45 a.m., also at Kin 1.
