An illness-aided loss to the Surrey Eagles is bad enough for the Prince George Spruce Kings, but losing key players like Evan Bellamy and Brogan McNeill to the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League makes the drive to the BCHL playoffs that much harder.
The league’s most northern franchise dropped a 7-5 decision to the Scott Gomez-coached Eagles in front of 774 fans at the Kopar Memorial Arena on Wednesday.
No pun intended, but it was a sickening start for Prince George, coughing up two Surrey goals in the span of 45 seconds to Ryan Evenhuis and Cameron Caron on identical 2-on-1 rushes.
Seven minutes later, Kazumo Saskai carelessly coughed up the puck inside the Spruce Kings blueline allowing Massimo Fazio to find Evenhuis for his second of the period, bolstering the Surrey advantage to 3-0.
With their backs already up against the wall, PG decided to fight back and give the Eagles a taste of their own medicine.
Just like the television advertisements that promote Buckley’s cough medicine tasting awful but often working, Nick Metelkin and Corson Maguire were just what the doctor ordered for the Spruce Kings with each scoring their first BCHL goals.
Metelkin outwaited Surrey netminder Aiden Fischer rifling a wrist shot, high-glove side. Ninety seconds later, Maguire drove to the net deflecting a hot behind-the-back pass from Quesnel product Carter Hesselgrave to make it a 3-2 game after 20 minutes.
In the second, Surrey continued to jump on a struggling Dylan Johnson inside the PG cage. After a missed pick inside the blueline, Miles Burgin streaked down the wing and blasted a shot into the yawning cage.
PG pushed back lighting the lamp twice more in a span of three minutes. Some excellent work along the board by rookie forward Ryan Wachtel set up a pass to a wide-open Will Moore who made a power move to the front the of the Eagles net, tucking the puck in short side past Fischer.
A calamity of errors inside the Eagles zone, set up Wachtel to quickly rifle a puck past the five-hole of Fischer to even the score at 4-4.
However, Johnson’s struggles reared its ugly head again prior to the intermission where a harmless shot by Brandon Gill bounced off the goaltender’s glove and into the net.
Fazio and Sam Elliott added the Eagles lead in the third period. The Spruce Kings had a stretch of four consecutive power-plays but were only able to strike once.
Maks Percic’s slapshot re-directed off a Surrey stick into the goal.
PG outshot Surrey 36-28 and went 1-for-6 on the power-play while the Eagles were 0-for-3.
The Spruce Kings (12-18-3-1), who are off for seven days, after coming off an eleven-day break, remain two points behind the Nanaimo Clippers (14-17-2-0) for the final playoff spot in the Coastal Conference.
But the bad news is that Nanaimo heads to the Hap Parker Arena to play the basement-dwelling Powell River Kings (7-23-3-1) Friday and Saturday opening the door for them to extend their edge over the idle Spruce Kings.
PG is back in action against the Clippers January 29th from the Frank Crane Arena, kicking off a three-game Vancouver Island road trip.
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