Bruins 2, Blazers 1

From The Daily News of Saturday, Sept. 22, 2007 . . .

They aren’t the expansion Chilliwack Bruins anymore.
The Bruins delivered that message — and it came through loud and clear —
Friday night at Interior Savings Centre as they opened the WHL regular
season by bouncing the Kamloops Blazers 2-1 before 4,844 fans.
It was the second-smallest opening-night crowd in the history of the
facility, which opened for the 1992-93 season, behind only the 4,610 fans
who watched the Blazers beat the Portland Winter Hawks 6-3 to open last
season.
“We have 17 guys back,” offered Chilliwack defenceman Nick Holden, the
Bruins’ 20-year-old captain from St. Albert, Alta. “We know what the (WHL)
and the road trips are all about. I don’t think we’re an expansion team at
all.
“We know our systems. We know our forecheck. We know our (defensive) zone.
We know where guys are going to be because we played with each other for a
year. That is really helping us out.”
The Bruins went into last season as the WHL’s newest baby and scraped into
the playoffs by finishing fourth in the B.C. Division. But there were signs
of improvement in the second half, including four straight victories over
the second-place Blazers.
Last night, the Blazers had their speed game going early but when they
didn’t score quickly the pop in their game went flat. The longer they went
without scoring, the tighter they got.
“We let ourselves get frustrated,” Dean Clark, Kamloops’ general manager and
head coach, acknowledged, adding that, in his opinion, a 7-1 Blazers victory
over the Bruins in a preseason game in Abbotsford came back to bite his
guys.
“I think we (thought) this is going to be easy,” Clark said. “We didn’t
respect the opponent enough. They came in and played a pretty good road
game. They scored first and limited our chances.”
The Bruins scored first when Holden came free in the slot and ripped home an
Oscar Moller pass on a power play with 35 seconds left in the first period.
“Ozzie made a nice pass . . . (Mark Santorelli) and Ozzie were making good
plays in the corner and found me on the power play,” said Holden, a
seven-goal man last season. “It’s great to get that first one out of the way
and it feels good that it helped our team to win.”
The visitors made it 2-0 at 14:42 of the second period when the Blazers
allowed centre Brayden Metz to stop for coffee behind their net. Given time,
he found Colby Kulhanek, who had two goals last season, on the lip of the
crease for the Bruins’ second goal.
“We were on a break and the puck went behind the net,” said Metz, who is
from Regina but isn’t related to the Metz brothers, Don and Nick, who were
from Wilcox, Sask., and combined to win nine Stanley Cups with, yes, the
Toronto Maple Leafs back in the day.
“I didn’t think I saw anything,” Brayden, 17, continued. “But I gave it time
and I saw (Kulhanek’s) stick and put it there. Thankfully, it found a way
in.”
Clark didn’t like that goal at all.
“All our forwards are standing there watching the puck and we didn’t give
(goaltender Justin Leclerc) a lot of help. That was a terrible goal to give
up but it wasn’t our goaltender.”
No, it wasn’t. The Blazers got a solid effort from Leclerc, who stopped 17
shots. Included in his night’s work was a pad save off Moller on a 2-on-0
break with rookie Ryan Howse and a chest save on Michael Proudley on a
2-on-1 break.
At one point in the third period, the Bruins enjoyed a 4-on-1 jailbreak,
only to have Proudley shoot wide right.
At the other end, Matt Esposito lost his shutout with 0.1 seconds to play
when left-winger Travis Dunstall got the puck behind him on a scramble
during the home side’s eighth power play of the game.
“They played a very good road game,” Clark said of the Bruins, pointing out
that “we got outworked for extended periods of the game in our own building,
which didn’t happen to us at all last season.”
Defenceman Ryan Bender, the Blazers’ captain, agreed.
“We got away from our game plan off the start,” he said. “The first period a
few too many guys were nervous and we really struggled at handling the puck.
We were turning the puck over in too many bad areas of the ice. That was a
big part of the game.
“And they just outworked us.”
Bender also agreed with Clark on the impact of that preseason victory.
“I think that had a big-time role in it,” Bender said. “We beat them 7-1 and
outshot them badly (44-15). I think too many guys took them for granted and
it showed out there tonight.”
The good thing about the WHL, though, is that teams play 72 games.
“We play Seattle (tonight),” Bender said, “and we know they’re going to be
coming in here well rested. We are going to have to put this one behind us
and go forward.”
JUST NOTES: Referee Andy Thiessen gave the Bruins nine of 12 minors. . . .
Esposito made 21 saves. . . . Chilliwack was 1-for-2 on the power play; the
Blazers were 1-for-8. . . . Russ Farwell, the long-time general manager of
the Seattle Thunderbirds, watched the game from the catwalk. His club plays
the Blazers tonight. Game time at The ATM is 7 o’clock.