Rodgers quenches thirst . . . finally

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
For the longest time, Alex Rodgers was like a guy walking across a desert
constantly looking at the sky and wondering when it might rain.
Rodgers, in his third season with the WHL’s Kamloops Blazers, wasn’t looking
for a torrential downpour. No, all he wanted was a drop or two.
Well, the good news is that he got two drops Sunday; the bad news is they
were tainted.
“Yeah, it’s nice to know that I’ve scored,” Rodgers said earlier this week.
“Too bad we lost, though.”
Rodgers, in his 23rd game of the season, scored his first two goals but that
kind of got lost in the mess after the Blazers blew a 5-2 lead with 10
minutes to play in the third period and ultimately lost 7-5 to the host
Portland Winter Hawks.
“We took them way too lightly in the third period,” Rodgers said. “We
thought the game was over in the third period. Before you know it, they had
a couple of lucky bounces and then . . . I don’t know. . . we just fell
apart.
“It was very disappointing to the team to do something like that. We
obviously paid for it at 4:45 in the morning.”
When the Blazers arrived home from Portland early Monday, head coach Barry
Smith sent them out for a skate.
“I was beyond surprised,” Rodgers recalled. “I just woke up from the bus and
go in the room and we’re on the ice 45 minutes later. It’s not something I
was looking forward to at all.”
He is looking forward to scoring goals again. He gets another chance
tonight, 7 o’clock, against the Kelowna Rockets at Interior Savings Centre.
The Chilliwack Bruins will be at The ATM on Sunday, 5 p.m.
“It was definitely hard,” Rodgers said of the drought, “but I’m glad it’s
over and hopefully things will go in the net a little easier now.”
It’s not like Rodgers, a 19-year-old native of Salmon Arm, doesn’t know
where the net is located. After all, he put up 100 points in 68 games over
two seasons with the major midget Thompson Blazers, winning the B.C. league
scoring title with 63 points, including 25 goals, in 2005-06. Last season,
for goodness sakes, he had 45 points, 16 of them goals, in 68 games.
But if you examine last season’s numbers a little more closely, well, maybe
there was an omen there. You see, Rodgers scored but one goal over his last
15 regular-season games and then didn’t score in two playoff games.
Throw that together with the start of this season and you’ve got one goal in
39 games.
“There’s not much you can do to control it, just work hard and hopefully the
bounces go your way,” Rodgers said. “I was lucky to get two good bounces
there . . . I was pretty happy there.
“It was something I don’t want to go through again. It was a good learning
curve and hopefully I don’t have to go through that again and we don’t have
to have this conversation again.”
While his offence dried up, Rodgers was able to find some positives in
again, especially as a key part of the penalty-killing unit. He also is only
minus-2 — no feat for a player with just nine points on a team that has
allowed 88 goals.
“I think I’ve been doing a pretty good job on the penalty kill,” he said.
“It’s easier when you’re doing something else better for the team.
Definitely, knowing that I was contributing on the penalty kill made it
easer to forget about the goal-scoring drought.”
Of course, it was impossible for him to forget it while in the dressing
room, where, he said, there were a lot of words flying in his direction.
“Obviously,” he said, “I heard it for 22 games so I’m glad it’s over. The
room’s a little bit easier to go into now. I can actually start beaking
other people and not receive it back as much.”
Of course, it was just over a year ago that Rodgers was among the guys
giving it to right-winger Tyler Shattock, who went without a goal for the
first 17 games of last season.
“Yeah,” Rodgers said with a chuckle, admitting that he had given it to
Shattock. “It was kind of weird how it happened (to me) this season.”
Kind of weird, perhaps, because Shattock also is from Salmon Arm.
“It must be (the water),” a laughing Rodgers said. “I got the bad part of
the lake this summer.”

gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca