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HomeNewsHeidt's five-point night helps Cougars deliver knock out blow against Victoria
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Heidt’s five-point night helps Cougars deliver knock out blow against Victoria

By Brendan Pawliw
File Photo - Riley Heidt of PG Cougars turns to the crowd during a victory. Photo credit James Doyle/PG Cougars.

The road to a BC Division title will be a bumpy ride.

In a game that had hits, fights and a playoff-like emotion, Riley Heidt, who tallied a game-high five points, and the Cougars top forwards were on another level in a 6-3 victory over the Victoria Royals in front of 3,392 fans at CN Centre.

After Justin Kipke (Victoria) and Borya Valis traded goals in the opening 20 minutes, it didn’t take much for either team to push the needle into the red.

Following a hard check by Valis on Royals star rookie defenseman Keaton Verhoeff the bad blood started to reach a boiling point. In a span of sixty seconds, the home crowd was treated to a couple of scraps.

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The first one saw Aiden Foster clash with hulking Victoria power forward Reggie Newman – as both combatants jockeyed for an upper-hand, Foster scored points on the take down.

Then, a sweet open ice hit by Jett Lajoie caught the attention of Royals blueliner Seth Fryer who took exception and dropped the mitts. Both grappled to the ice, with Fryer getting the edge.

However, that brief stint of old-time hockey turned out to be the boost of rocket fuel the Cougars needed who blasted off into space and were out of this world the rest of the period.

“Those kinds of sequences do (bring you a lot of energy). It carries a lot of juice and a lot of emotion into the game and we are a tight team. We stuck together, we had Foster and Lajoie and he got hit before that – this was one of the reasons Foster got into it. It brings a lot of emotion into our building,” said Mark Lamb Cougars head coach and general manager.

Cougars standout rookie Carson Carels made the best of a broken play by passing the puck through centre ice who found Heidt streaking down the wing – once inside the Victoria zone, he lasered a cross-ice pass to Terik Parascak who then located the trailing Viliam Kmec who ripped a slap shot that trickled through the pads of Jayden Kraus.

Three minutes later, it would be Parascak’s turn to light the lamp on a 3-on-1 rush. A Royals turnover inside the PG blueline led Heidt up the ice with Valis.

As Heidt and Valis mesmerized Kraus with some quick-passing, Parascak was screaming down the middle connecting on an awkward shot that went over the should of the Victoria netminder and in.

“I thought Heidt’s line could have scored four or five goals in the first period. I could see some frustration in him because it wasn’t going in and he stuck with it. Riley Heidt was the best player on the ice tonight,” added Lamb.

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Heidt’s magician-like skills with the puck continued on a subsequent PG power-play, outwaiting several Royals before connecting with Ziemmer on a cross-ice feed to make it 4-1 after 40 minutes.

“There top guys really dominated the game. I mean their top line is as good as we have played against but in saying that, we did a lot of things that are not conducive to winning games. You can’t take penalties – I thought our first two penalties were not smart penalties. You can’t slash a guy’s stick out of his hand and you can’t stick out your leg to trip a guy in the offensive zone. They make no sense. You are playing fire when you do that,” said James Patrick, Victoria head coach.

“I thought in the second we got playing river hockey by exchanging chances. Our third man kept getting caught and their top-end players took advantage of some of the mistakes we made,” added Patrick.

Predictably, the Royals pushed hard to begin the third period pressuring the young Cougars defence. After a misplay at the side of the goal, Newman pounced on a loose puck that was jarred loose by Tanner Scott squiring through the pad of Ravensbergen where the hulking 19-year-old had an easy tap in.

Similar to Heidt, it would be Ziemmer’s turn to take the game over. After getting denied point blank in the slot by Kraus – the 20-year-old sniper from Mayerthorpe, Alberta got his revenge connecting on a give-and-go with Hunter Laing, ripping a shot through the wickets of Kraus.

Finish import Markus Loponen trimmed the deficit to 5-3 capitalizing on some sloppy play in front of the Cougars goal, sliding home a loose puck.

Despite this, Lamb believes the youthful PG blueline, which includes Arseni Anisimov, Dermot Johnston, Carels and Leith Hunter will make no shortage of strides by the time Christmas comes around.

“We got some young D back there getting some really good experience right now. These games are very important for them to get better,”

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“These young players are very good players and it’s about getting them up to speed with the league. I really like what I see even though they are young.”

Heidt capped off his five-point night with an empty-net goal.

PG outshot Victoria 42-37. The Cougars went 2-for-3 on the power-play while the Royals were 1-for-4.

The Cougars improve to 7-4-2-1 and sit back atop the BC Division by a single point over Victoria (7-3-1-1) – although the Royals have two games in hand.

Both teams play again tonight (Saturday) at 6pm from CN Centre.

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