Blazers have another mountain to climb

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
The Kamloops Blazers went mountain climbing on Sunday.
Tonight, they hope to climb over the Tri-City Americans, who bring the WHL’s best winning percentage (.812) to Interior Savings Centre.
“We took them to Mount Paul,” Scott Ferguson, the Blazers’ interim head coach, said after Monday’s practice. “It was good for them. It was something different. It was a good day in general.”
The Blazers have had a traumatic last couple of weeks. They dropped the last five games of a six-game East Division swing that cost head coach Barry Smith his job. Then, in their first home appearance since a 12-5 loss to the Medicine Hat Tigers on Oct. 12, the Blazers were flattened 7-1 by the Chilliwack Bruins on Friday night.
That means the home boys take a six-game losing skid into tonight’s game, which starts at 7 o’clock.
“They’re looking at the scoreboard and hoping they’re going to win, instead of focusing on what their next shift is, what their next job is,” Ferguson said. “When you focus on your next shift and what you’re going to do, the scoreboard takes care of itself.
“We’ve got a group of guys here who are hoping right now and that’s a tough mindset to try and break.”
Which was reason enough to go looking for a breath of fresh air on Sunday.
“That was good,” said defenceman Bronson Maschmeyer.
And, as you might expect, Ferguson found a way to relate what happened to Blazers hockey.
“We started going up,” Maschmeyer explained, “and at first we were going straight up. We were trying to go through and blaze our own path.”
Upon reaching the top, Ferguson talked about the difference between traveling the beaten track and the path less travelled.
“That relates to us,” Maschmeyer said, “where there are people before us who have done it and how we can’t go on our own. We have to follow what they have done with the winning tradition here.
“I thought that was pretty cool; it brought the whole thing together.”
As Ferguson put it: “It had some hockey similarities. We live in a beautiful area. Why not get outside and do some of that? it was good to do something different.”
They were back from the mountain and on the ice Monday, looking to improve their game and improve their fortunes.
And despite a six-goal deficit Friday, Ferguson did find some positives.
“It’s tough to take positives from a 7-1 loss,” he said. “But we kept them under 40 shots, which is a plus for us. They had 14 chances, which is still too high, but we were giving up 18 to 20 before.
“We’re on the right path. Now it’s just a matter of being committed for a full 60 minutes.”
Maschmeyer, an 18-year-old who was acquired from the Vancouver Giants on Sept. 3, felt the Blazers were ready to play Friday. But in their present fragile state, an early goal proved their undoing.
“We were going to come out and try to get something going,” Maschmeyer said. “We had a lot of energy in the dressing room and we wanted to build off that. We started pretty strong on the first couple of shifts and then a couple of things went wrong and it turned into a real negative.”
That negative was the Bruins’ first goal, just 3:54 into the first period, and things pretty much snowballed from there.
“We have to try to get away from that,” Maschmeyer stated. “The mindset sometimes changes where you’re out there and something bad happens and all of a sudden you’re thinking, ‘Here we go again.’
“We can’t look at the score. We have to stay positive . . . keep going. (We have to) say up on the bench and work our way through it.”
Tonight’s game is the second in a six-game homestand that continues Friday against the Edmonton Oil Kings and Saturday against the Kelowna Rockets.

SCOUTINGREPORT
TRI-CITY AMERICANS at KAMLOOPS BLAZERS
Today, 7 p.m., Interior Savings Centre (Radio NL 610)
TRI-CITY (13-3-0-0): The Americans, who lead the Western Conference and have the WHL’s best winning percentage (.812), are coming off a weekend sweep of the Cougars in Prince George. . . . The Americans won 3-2 on Friday and 4-0 on Saturday. . . . The Americans are 7-3-0-0 on the road. . . . Sophomore C Brendan Shinnimin, who had 25 points, including 12 goals, in 64 games last season, has 28 points, 12 of them goals, in 16 games this time around. . . . G Drew Owsley, who got into 17 games as a freshman last season, started the club’s first 15 games this season. He is 12-3-0-0, with a 2.42 GAA and a .916 save percentage. . . . G Brett Martyniuk’s only appearance this season was that shutout in Prince George on Saturday. . . . Sophomore LW Spencer Asuchak, who is from Kamloops, has two goals in eight games. . . . Tri-City practised here Monday at 8:30 a.m. . . . The Americans don’t have any imports on their roster at present. F Sergei Drozd, a freshman from Belarus, is playing for that country’s team at the World Junior A Challenge in Summerside, P.E.I. Meanwhile, Russian G Alex Pechurski, a fifth-round selection by the Pittsburgh Penguins in the NHL’s 2008 draft, but he is on the roster of Metallurg Magnitogorsk of the Continental league. . . . Injuries: D Brock Sutherland (shoulder, questionable).
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KAMLOOPS (8-8-2-0): The Blazers, who last led the Western Conference on Oct. 20, have lost six in a row, including a 7-1 defeat at the hands of the visiting Chilliwack Bruins on Friday. . . . The Blazers are 6-2-1-0 at home, but in their last two home games Kamloops is 0-2 and has been outscored 19-6. . . . The Blazers went 4-7-2-0 in October. . . . They will play 11 games in November, six of them at home. . . . D Linden Saip (knee) is expected to play tonight after missing one game, while LW Shayne Wiebe (collarbone) returns after sitting out two games. . . . LW Ryan Hanes, who suffered a concussion on Oct. 12, has resumed skating but won’t play. . . . C C.J. Stretch will sit out as he completes a four-game WHL suspension. . . . G Justin Leclerc will get the start. . . . Injuries: C Colin Smith (broken arm, out); C Dalibor Bortnak (spleen, out); LW Ryan Hanes (concussion, out).
— GREGG DRINNAN