PING! Blazers shoot way past Hurricanes

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
The last time the Lethbridge Hurricanes visited Interior Savings Centre it wasn’t pretty. They jumped out to a 6-0 first-period lead and waltzed to an 8-1 WHL victory over the Kamloops Blazers.
Well, the Hurricanes were back Friday night and it turns out the Blazers have long memories.
“There’s always talk about that before the game . . . that they gave us a stomping last season,” said Kamloops left-winger Shayne Wiebe, after he set up three goals in a 5-2 victory, the team’s fourth straight triumph. The Blazers, who left after the game for Prince George and a meeting tonight with the Cougars, have picked up nine points in their last five games.
The game was played in front of an announced crowd of 3,781 fans. Truth be told, there appeared to be at least 1,000 no-shows.
This Lethbridge team is no slouch; in fact, it has more big guns than the Canadian Navy. In January, the Hurricanes stormed through the B.C. Division, going 4-1 and outscoring the opposition, 30-10. It opened this season’s tour with a 7-2 thrashing of the Bruins in Chilliwack on Wednesday.
“We knew they’re a good team coming in,” Wiebe continued, “and we knew what we had to do to win.”
What the Blazers had to do, he said, was “just making sure we did the simple things and not turning pucks over . . . getting pucks in and getting pucks out.”
Which about describes how the Blazers went about their business.
Lethbridge forward Colton Sceviour opened the scoring at 5:49 of the first period on a power play and for just a moment some people may have wondered if this was going to be deja vu all over again.
But the Blazers got that one back just 55 seconds later when freshman Jake Trask, who is between Wiebe and Tyler Shattock these days, pounded a rebound past goaltender Juha Metsola.
That goal served notice that the Blazers weren’t going to be pushovers this time.
Slovakian centre Dalibor Bortnak gave the Blazers a 2-1 lead at 13:31 of the first period on a beautiful re-direction, only to have the visitors tie it at 12:24 of the second on a shorthanded effort by forward Carter Bancks, who beat Justin Leclerc less than 90 seconds after Kamloops centre C.J. Stretch had hit the cross-bar.
After Bancks scored, it looked for at least a few moments as though momentum had turned. At 13:30, Lethbridge defenceman Brennan Yadlowski had a shot hit iron and two minutes later it was forward Dwight King hitting the cross-bar.
“Our first period definitely wasn’t our best period but I thought we came on and played pretty well for three-quarters of the second period,” Lethbridge head coach Michael Dyck said.
“The turning point was obviously King hitting the cross-bar and they turn back and they score and then they get another quick one.”
First, Stretch tucked one into a gaping net after a delicious behind-the-back pass from winger Kenton Dulle, at 15:31, and then Shattock snapped a shot past Metsola from the high slot, at 17:29.
“We made (some errors) that ended up costing us,” Dyck said.
For the most part, those were coverage errors. Shattock, who also scored the game’s last goal early in the third period, was wide open in the slot on both of his goals.
“Teammates were getting open and it was easy to find them,” Wiebe, a sophomore, said of the first three-assist and first three-point night of his WHL career.
Shattock now has seven goals in 18 games; a year ago, he scored six times in the exhibition season but then didn’t get his first regular-season goal until Game No. 18.
“(Head coach Barry Smith) called me in at the start of the season,” Shattock said, “and said, ‘I expect you to be one of our guys.’ I’ve always wanted to be one of those guys. When I’m one of those guys, I think I can produce.”
Any number of players contributed on this night, none more than Trask, who enjoyed the finest game of his young career. He had the goal and an assist but provided energy and didn’t shy away from checking Boychuk, one of the WHL’s top offensive players.
“He was just waiting to come out of his shell,” Wiebe said. “He’s a very good player.”
The Blazers also got another solid night from Leclerc, who made 27 saves against the team from which he was acquired prior to last season. In his last four starts he is 4-0 with a 1.75 GAA and a .940 save percentage.
JUST NOTES: Referee Sean Raphael, who didn’t dress up as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, gave the visitors 11 of 21 minors and one of two majors. . . . The Blazers were 2-for-6 on the PP; the Hurricanes were 1-for-5. . . . Wiebe has 16 points in 18 games; last season, he finished with 17 points in 66 games. . . . Kamloops D Giffen Nyren picked up his 15th assist to equal his career high from last season with the Moose Jaw Warriors. . . . The NHL’s Los Angeles Kings have decided to keep C Oscar Moller, 19, rather than return him to Chilliwack. Moller has four points, including two goals, in nine games. . . . Prince George has dealt RW Dale Hunt, 18, to the Everett Silvertips for D Jeff Regier, 17. Hunt, the third pick in the 2005 bantam draft, was sent home earlier this month and told to wait for a trade. Regier, the 34th pick in the 2006 draft, had six assists in 58 games with Everett. Hunt fills a spot on Everett’s roster that was created Thursday when RW Matt Ius, 18, left the team because he was unhappy with his role.
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
gdrinnan.blogspot.com

CROWD COUNT
The 15 smallest crowds to attend a Kamloops Blazers regular-season game since the opening of Riverside Coliseum for the 1992-93 season:
2,988 — Jan. 3, 1993
Tri-City 7, Kamloops 4
3,256 — Oct. 28, 1992
Kamloops 2, Portland 2
3,257 — Oct. 19, 1992
Seattle 2, Kamloops 1
3,474 — Dec. 14, 1992
Kamloops 5, Spokane 2
3,526 — Dec. 11, 1992
Med. Hat 6, Kamloops 5 (OT)
3,573 — Dec. 6, 1992
Swift Current 5, Kamloops 4
3,657 — Oct. 12, 1992
Kamloops 6, Spokane 2
3,715 — Oct. 23, 1992
Kamloops 3, Tacoma 1
3,771 — Nov. 23, 1992
Spokane 3, Kamloops 2 (OT)
3,773 — Dec. 4, 1992
Kamloops 5, Regina 1
3,781 — Oct. 31, 2008
Kamloops 5, Lethbridge 2
3,791 — Oct. 22, 2008
Kamloops 5, Seattle 2
3,813 — Nov. 30, 1992
Kamloops 5, Seattle 0
3,868 — Feb. 18, 1993
Kamloops 4, Lethbridge 1
3,898 — Jan. 5, 1993
Kamloops 7, Moose Jaw 1