On paper it was a bit of a mismatch.
Missing five starters, the injury-riddled, trade-depleted Tri-City Americans came into Prince George for a date with the Cougars with three 15-year-olds in the lineup, including the game’s starting goalie, Ronin Geraghty.
And for half the game, the kid from Burnaby stole the show.
In only his fourth WHL game Geraghty blanked the Cougars until they finally came to life late in the second period. After that, there was no stopping them and they rolled over the Americans 5-1.
Belarusian import Vladislav Mikhalchuk, with a goal and two assists, turned in his best game of the season since his return from the KHL and his offence sparked the Cougars to their most lopsided win of the 2019-20 campaign. Mikhalchuk’s goal capped a four-goal outburst in an eight-minute span of the third period.
Cole Moberg had just made it a 4-1 count on a Cougar power play five minutes into the period when Mikhalchuk turned it into a rout. He stole the puck at centre and used his speed to fend off defencemen Aidan Lawson and Jayden Platz to finish off a breakaway with a forehand five-hole shot through Geraghty.
“I just read it, I knew the defence was going to pass it and I just cheated a little bit and I got it,” said Mikhalchuk.
Mikhalchuk led the Cougars in scoring last season with 25 goals and 50 points but he’s struggled to get back to that pace. The 20-year-old now has four goals and 12 assists in 23 games since returning to the Cougars in November.
“We put a lot of effort in tonight, we blocked shots and when we got our chances we scored,” said Mikhalchuk. “That young goalie (Geraghty) is pretty short but he’s really good. We got our chances but he saved it and we kept pushing.
“We have to win these games because we need these points and these next games are really huge for us and if we win tomorrow against Tri and next week against Seattle it’s going to make it a lot easier to make the playoffs.”
Mikhalchuk, the game’s first star, didn’t play his first WHL game until Nov. 15, after very limited icetime in 12 games of pro hockey in the KHL and VHL in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.
“He’s an offensive player and we brought him back for that reason and it’s taken him awhile to get up to speed,” said Cougars head coach and general manager Mark Lamb. “He wasn’t in great shape when he got back here, he didn’t play a lot, so basically he missed half a year. He’s just starting to get up to speed and he played great tonight, he’s starting to come along.”
Taylor Gauthier picked up his 10th win of the season, making 21 saves as the Americans were outshot 34-22.
The Cougars tested Geraghty early on but the Americans protected him well, keeping most of the Cougars’ 14 first-period shots from areas where he could see the puck. Tyson Upper hit the post and Ethan Browne had a good crack at the net on a wrister from the slot, the two best Cougar chances.
After getting outshot 14-5, Tri-City came out of the gate for the second period looking like a different team and the Cougars stumbled at every opportunity. Americans rookie John Little came close to scoring three minutes in, putting a shot through Gauthier’s legs which kicked just wide of the net. Forced to kill off an undisciplined cross-checking penalty to Marco Creta, Cougars centre Ilijah Colina sprung Connor Bowie on a shorthand breakaway and he got a great shot off but the pad save from Geraghty was even better, keeping his team’s lead intact.
Working with a clean sheet to start the third period, the Cougars pounced, scoring two goals 39 seconds apart for a 3-1 lead. Upper tracked a loose puck that slid into the corner off a face-off and spotted Colina all alone standing on the dot. Colina’s low shot didn’t have a lot of steam but enough to fool Geraghty. On the next shift, Mikhalchuk broke into the zone on a 2-on-1 and fed a perfect pass to Upper, who wired a high shot in for his seventh of the season.
“I thought we did a lot of good things, our power play was good (they went 2-for-4), which is a real positive going into game tomorrow and the next stretch,” said Lamb.
“Their goalie made a lot of really good saves in the first period to keep them in it and when you’re in a game like that you just have to stick with it and keep playing.”
Aside from his team’s shaky first half of the second period, Lamb also didn’t like the 5-on-3 penalty they took 12 minutes into the third period. Despite their healthy lead at that point, against a better team that might have come back to haunt them. Towards the end of that 90-second two man disadvantage Cats defenceman Jack Sander took a bullet shot off the ankle when he turned his foot sideways just as the shot arrived. In obvious agony, he stayed on the ice until Maser came out of the penalty box to block a shot and took off on a partial breakaway. For Sander, the lopsided win numbed that pain away.
It allowed the Cougars (14-25-3-4) to creep within eight points of the idle Seattle Thunderbirds for the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference. The Cougars will host Seattle Tuesday and Wednesday and could make up some ground in a hurry if they keep winning.
“We’ve been doing pretty well lately and this is a really big time with games against Tri-City and Seattle coming up here and we finally pulled it together and it’s good,” said Sander.
“You can’t take anybody lightly and we found that out against Swift Current, they gave us quite a bit of a game there and we kind of learned from that. The fans were really good tonight and it was nice to get a win like that.”
LOOSE PUCKS: The rematch is set for CN Centre Saturday at 7 p.m… The Cougars sported a retro look wearing baby-blue jerseys emblazoned with the Hockey Night in Canada crest. Those jerseys will be auctioned online at www.32auctions.com with all proceeds going to the BC/Yukon branch of the Kidney Foundation… Geraghty has played the last four games for the since signing Jan. 25 with the Americans, who traded 20-year-old starter Beck Warm to Edmonton at the deadline. Geraghty, a native of Burnaby, was the top-rated bantam prep goalie playing for West Van Academy last year on the Canadian Sports School Hockey League… The Booker Daniel fan club from Vanderhoof was out on full force cheering on the Americans’ No. 39. Daniel, 18, joined the Ams after a 38-point season in26 games last year with the major midget Cariboo Cougars. Through 34 WHL games he has four goals and two assists.
Friday WHL summary
Americans 1 at Cougars 5
First Period
No scoring.
Penalty – Platz TC (delay of game) 14:43.
Second Period
1. Tri-City, Zazula 5 (Bell, Ferguson) 6:44
2. Prince George, Maser 20 (Moberg, Sander) 16:16 (pp)
Penalties – Creta PG (cross-checking) 5:55, Greenway TC(goaltender interference) 15:06.
Third Period
3. Prince George, Colina 7 (Upper) 0:42
4. Prince George, Upper 7 (Mikhalchuk) 1:21
5. Prince George, Moberg 7 (Schoettler, Mikhalchuk) 5:20 (pp)
6. Prince George, Mikhalchuk 4, 7:59
Penalties – Joseph TC (hooking) 4:19, Lambert TC (fighting, misconduct), Creta PG (cross-checking, fighting, misconduct, minor served by Maser) 12:00, Kaddoura PG (cross-checking)12:30, Zazula TC (cross-checking) 19:05.
Shots on goal by
Tri-City 5 9 8 -22
Prince George 14 9 11 -34
Goal – Tri-City, Geraghty (L,0-3-0); Prince George, Gauthier (W,10-19-3-4).
Power plays – TC: 0-3; PG: 2-4.
Referees – Jeff Ingram, Bobby Jo Love; Linesmen – Nick Albinati, Anthony Maleta.
Attendance – 2,126.
