Blazers stick to plan and win

By GREGG DRINNAN
The Kamloops Blazers, having made like a cat with a hairball Tuesday night,
weren’t about to repeat the performance just 24 hours later.
“We actually stuck to the game plan tonight and we didn’t back off,” stated
winger Kenton Dulle after his Blazers had scored a 5-2 WHL victory over the
Seattle Thunderbirds before 3,791 fans at Interior Savings Centre on
Wednesday night. “We kept playing the same way we did in the first two
(periods) and we didn’t give them any chances.
“So that was better for us tonight.”
One night previous, the Blazers had coughed up a 4-1 third-period lead en
route to dropping a 5-4 shootout decision to the visiting Tri-City
Americans. In that game, the Americans, obviously a much superior team to
this Seattle bunch, took over with some physical play and outshot their
hosts 15-7 in the third period.
The Blazers, who had lost five in a row and nine of 11, weren’t about to let
that happen again, especially not against a team that came in having lost
three straight and nine of 11.
The home boys took a 2-1 lead into the third period and this time, as Dulle
said, they didn’t let up. They outshot the Thunderbirds 16-11 in the final
20 minutes and outscored them 3-1. Kamloops accomplished that by being the
aggressors and getting pucks and traffic to the Seattle net where a
beleaguered goaltender, 16-year-old Calvin Pickard, wasn’t getting a whole
lot of help.
“That was our plan from the start,” Dulle said. “Do what we had to do but do
it for a full 60 minutes. We did that tonight.”
It was Dulle who scored what would be the game’s biggest goal, rifling a
C.J. Stretch centring pass behind Pickard at 4:24 of the third period.
Seattle winger Jonathan Parker, a product of the midget AAA Los Angeles
Kings program, had counted his first WHL goal for Seattle at 17:50 of the
second period, a score that cut the Blazers’ lead to 2-1 and caused some
uneasy stomachs.
But Dulle’s goal gave Kamloops a 3-1 lead and served notice that the Act of
the Folding Tents had left town.
Two minutes after Dulle’s goal, winger Brendan Ranford scored off a nearly
identical play and the Blazers had a 4-1 lead.
Seattle made some noise, with winger David Richard beating a
confident-looking Justin Leclerc at 13:43. But any threat of a Seattle
comeback ended 17 seconds later when sophomore Jimmy Bubnick pounded a
rebound past Pickard, the younger brother of Tri-City goaltender Chet
Pickard, for his 10th of the season.
Centre Jake Trask, with his first WHL goal, and centre Scott Wasden also
scored for the Blazers.
“We have played better games than this one, and the players know it,”
Kamloops head coach Barry Smith said, “but we did get rewarded and justly
so. We did what we had to do to win. (In the third period), we got pucks to
the net and we did the right things. Guys were very focused on that and that
got them over the hump right there.”
Smith also pointed out that his club hadn’t played that badly in losing its
previous five games, especially in nearly identical 3-2 home-ice losses to
the Chilliwack Bruins and Prince Albert Raiders and Tuesday’s loss to the
Americans.
“We’ve played six games and four of them have been real good,” Smith said.
“But we only got three points out of those four games. We could easily be a
game over .500. We’ve played to that level, without a doubt.
“Now we just have to keep believing in ourselves . . . it’s a long way to go
yet but if you fight through these things early in the year, it’s going to
be real valuable at the end. Guys will learn and then they’ll know what it
takes and when it gets harder they’ll be prepared to do those harder
things.”
Kamloops (5-8-0-2) is off today. They return to practice Thursday to prepare
for a Saturday game in Chilliwack — the Blazers and Bruins are tied for
seventh in the Western Conference — and a Sunday visit by the Brandon Wheat
Kings.
JUST NOTES: Referees Saad Al-Jadir and Sean Raphael gave each team six
minors and one major. . . . Seattle was 1-for-5 on the PP; the Blazers were
0-for-6. . . . Leclerc made 25 saves, with his best work coming late in the
third period. At the other end, Pickard stopped 31 shots. . . . Bubnick, a
sophomore, has surpassed last season’s goal total of nine, which came in 64
games. He is tied for second in the league, behind Calgary Hitmen F Brandon
Kozun, who has 11 goals. . . . Helen Alex, the mother of former Blazers D
Ray Macias, is the general manager of the midget AAA Los Angeles Kings, the
team for which Parker played last season. Kamloops D Blair Underwood, a
healthy scratch the last two games, also played there.

gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
gdrinnan.blogspot.com