Blazers solve Rockets

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
The Kamloops Blazers have served notice that the days of the Kelowna Rockets kicking sand in their faces are over. The 98-pound weakling who got bounced all over the beach a season ago is no more.
The Blazers, who had lost 14 straight games to the defending-champion Rockets, gave more than they took Friday night as they stayed unbeaten with a 4-1 victory before 4,080 fans at Interior Savings Centre.
The teams meet again tonight in the Little Apple, with the Blazers looking for victory No. 4 and the Rockets (0-2-1-0) trying for their first.
The Rockets likely will be without forward Max Adolph (leg) and defencemen Mitchell Chapman (shoulder) and Tyson Barrie for the rematch. All three left in the first period, Chapman following his first shift, Barrie at 6:02 after a hit from Shayne Wiebe, and Adolph at 15:10 after crashing hard into the end boards in the Kamloops zone.
Ryan Huska, the Rockets’ head coach, said that Barrie, who may be Kelowna’s most important player, was “sore all over.”
The Blazers, meanwhile, were anything but sore. After all, the Rockets had won seven straight games in Kamloops and were starting to look at our city the way a tourist looks at a spa.
“I think so,” Kamloops captain Tyler Shattock said when asked if a message had been delivered, “but I think we can be even better. I thought we were pretty undisciplined. We took far too many penalties. They got 15 shots or something in the second period; in that sense, we can be better.”
The Rockets, trailing 1-0 after a Jimmy Bubnick power-play goal, were the beneficiaries of four second-period power plays, one of them a carry-over.
But while Kelowna held an 18-8 edge in second-period shots, the Blazers scored the only goal, with Shattock one-timing home a C.J. Stretch pass.
Forward Lucas Bloodoff pulled the Rockets to within one, bouncing the puck off goaltender Jon Groenheyde’s left pad as he went post-to-post and back again during a messy situation nine minutes into the third. Groenheyde, though, was strong, making 36 saves and earning tonight’s start — his third straight — in the process.
Shattock, with a second goal, this one on the power play at 12:35, and Dylan Willick, with his first WHL score at 13:32, put it away.
“We had some good opportunities,” said Huska, who credited Groenheyde’s good play and the Blazers’ shot-blocking. “Some were tipped and some were deflections that went wide. Maybe on another night they go in. That’s the way it works some times.”
“We were really good in the third period,” said Shattock, who leads the WHL with five goals. “We made a goal for ourselves never to let a team come back in the third. That’s what all the good teams in this league do.”
Blazers head coach Barry Smith, too, liked the third period.
“I thought we managed the third period real well,” he said. “Even after they got that one, I thought we really managed it from there and brought it home. Those last 11 minutes . . . that’s when we played our best hockey.”
At one point in the game, Smith said that Shattock was expressing power-play frustration on the bench.
“He was getting frustrated as I used the other guys more,” Smith said. “I told him, ‘Three out of 10 is good. Don’t get frustrated. It’ll come.’
“And it did. I went back to those guys because they’re our veteran leaders and they scored at the right time. That was a huge goal right there.”
Shattock wrote off the frustration to his wanting to score on every power play.
“Our unit expects to score,” he said. “Every power play is a chance to win a game so we have to take it as a chance to win a game when we go out there.”
That Kamloops power-play unit is 6-for-18 in its last two games.
“That’s good,” Shattock said, “but we want more.”
JUST NOTES: The Blazers were 2-for-8 on the power play; Kelowna was 0-for-8. . . . Brett Kissel, a rising country star from the Edmonton area, did a great job on O Canada. He’s at the Kamloops Convention Centre tonight, 7 o’clock.
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
gdrinnan.blogspot.com