The Prince George Cougars have been winning often lately and that's given them a bit of breathing room in the Western Hockey League's playoff district.
Heading into tonight's game at CN Centre against the Victoria Royals, the Cougars, winners of six of their last seven games, are three points up on the Vancouver Giants and Kamloops Blazersin the chase for third place in the B.C. Division.
If they can hold on to third, with eight games left in the regular season, the Cougars will open the playoffs against the Royals in Victoria. But a lot can change in eight games and the Royals would love to play the spoiler role during their two-game visit to Prince George to make that playoff race more interesting.
So far in the season series it's been an even split. In November at CN Centre the Cougars beat Victoria in the first game 3-2, then lost the rematch 6-2. I was a similar scenario in December in Victoria -- a 4-3 Cougars' win, followed by a 4-0 Royals victory.
The Royals (34-26-3-1) rank fifth overall in the Western Conference, while the Cougars (27-33-2-2) have won four straight to move into eighth place.
The Royals are one of the WHL's bigger teams and Cougars head coach Mark Holick says they lie to play a pro style with punishing physicality, sound team defence and balanced scoring.
The Royals have been getting point production from their top forwards -- Austin Carroll , Tyler Soy, Brandon Magee and former Cougar Alex Forsberg, who has 11 goals and 17 points in 22 games since joining the Royals in a trade from Saskatoon.
On defence, they've got Detroit Red Wings prospect Joe Hicketts, who ranks second in team scoring with 58 points, despite missing two weeks while playing for Canada in the world juniors, and bruising bashers Travis Brown, Chaz Reddekopp and Quesnel native Ryan Gagnon.
"They're a big strong group with big defence and when you go to their net below the dots they make sure you pay a price," said Holick. "Carroll, (Taylor) Crunk, (Brandon) Fushimi, (Logan) Fisher, and even Magee, are heavy forwards who finish their checks hard. Their goaltending (Justin Paulic and Coleman Vollrath) has been good and they play it physical and we have to make sure we're up to the task."
The Cougars top scoring line of Zach Pochiro-Jansen Harkins-Chase Witala has been on a tear lately with 46 points in nine games. Harkins, the WHL player of the week who leads the Cougars in scoring with 20 goals and 57 assists for 77 points, is just one assist shy of the Prince George team record for assists in a season. Quinn Hancock set the standard in 1997-98. But all those individual accolades are gravy when the team is chowing down on wins as the main course.
"Winning is contagious and once you start you never want to stop, and we have to keep it going because we're in a tight race right now," said Pochiro, who set up Harkins for the Cougars' second goal in a 3-2 win Wednesday over the Calgary Hitmen. "January we had a lot of guys who were hurt and it was a struggle and now that we have those guys back we're getting to know each other better. Having (Josh) Connolly on the power play, that took some time to get used to, and it's nice to have him back there.
"When you're winning you get those bounces that come your way."
The best line for the Cougars Wednesday was their checking line -- Cal Babych, Tyler Mrkonjic and Aaron Macklin and they created one of those good bounces for the goal that beat the Hitmen. Macklin and Babych, with his flukey game-winning shot from 80 feet away, were each rewarded with goals.
The Cougars endured an 11-game losing streak in January and are 7-2-1-1 since then, with points in nine of their last 11 games. Backed by the stellar goaltending of Ty Edmonds, they pulled out of their tailspin in time and are in position to make the playoffs of the first time since 2011.
"I'm happy for the guys, the kids are working hard," said Holick. "We were dealt a pretty tough (schedule) in January and the kids stuck together.
"Ty got his game in gear and certainly he's the guy driving our bus. Without our goaltender making the saves he's making it's tough to get wins and he's done all that and more. Our play in front of him has been better, and even (Wednesday) when we had some breakdowns he was there to help us out."
