Four-game winning streaks are good.
Three-game losing slides are bad.
With a 3-0 setback at the hands of the visiting Saskatoon Blades on Tuesday night, the Prince George Cougars not only saw the wrong kind of streak grow, they also lost their precarious hold on first place in the B.C. Division.
While the Cougars, who entered December on a bit of a roll, were being blanked by veteran Blades goaltender Steven Stanford, and doing it in front of a record-low announced home crowd of 1,663 at CN Centre, the Vancouver Giants were beating the Kamloops Blazers 3-0 to leapfrog the Cats into top spot in the ultra-tight division that saw all five B.C. teams within four points of each other entering Tuesday's action.
The Giants now have 34 points, one more than the Cougars.
At CN Centre, Stanford posted his first shutout of the season, stopping 32 shots. At the other end, James Priestner blocked 26 of 29 shots.
Brent Benson and Stefan Elliott, a former Cougars first-round bantam selection who refused to report to Prince George and was eventually dealt to the Blades as part of the Devin Setoguchi trade in 2006, put the Blades ahead 2-0 in the second period. Elliott has 10 goals on the season, and his goal included an assist from ex-Cougars centre Marek Viedensky, a 20-year-old San Jose Sharks draft choice.
Darian Dziurzynski, with help from Benson, rounded out the scoring in the third period.
The Cougars are 6-7-1-1 on home ice, and the overall record dropped to 15-12-2-1.
The Blades, the top club in the Eastern Conference, improved to 22-7-0-1.
The Cougars, who are in the midst of a month that features nine of 11 games on home ice, are now 1-2-0-1 in December. This weekend brings a challenging two-game series in Portland against the Western Conference-leading Winterhawks, with games Friday and Saturday. The Cougars are home next Tuesday to face the Swift Current Broncos, then play host to the Kamloops Blazers Dec. 17-18 in their final pre-Christmas games.
