Americans pummel Blazers

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
The Tri-City Americans felt they hadn’t been playing very well of late.
And then they came to Kamloops.
The Americans, 19-8-0-0 overall but just 5-5-0-0 in their last 10 outings when they arrived, treated the Kamloops Blazers like their kid brother in a game of road hockey on Friday, hammering the locals 7-0 before 4,017 fans at Interior Savings Centre.
This was the second time this WHL season that the Blazers were beaten by seven goals at home — they lost 12-5 to the Medicine Hat Tigers on Oct. 12.
It was the third time this season that the Blazers have been shut out.
It was the fourth 7-0 loss in franchise history but the first time it has happened on home ice.
The Blazers’ honeymoon, it turned out, lasted less than 48 hours.
The home boys, who were cheered enthusiastically while blanking the visiting Edmonton Oil Kings 5-0 on Wednesday night, got the Bronx cheer just 14 minutes into last night’s game.
It took the Blazers that long to get their first shot on goal — a harmless Ryan Hanes shot from the left wing — and by that time the writing was on the wall in big, big letters because the Americans already had two goals on eight shots.
The Americans (20-8-0-0) are atop the Western Conference; the Blazers (12-15-2-2) are eighth. The difference was very much in evidence.
A lot of this game was played in the Kamloops zone with the Americans rolling in like the incoming tide or stampeding cattle — take your pick.
And whenever the Blazers did get a scoring chance, which wasn’t often, Tri-City goaltender Drew Owsley was there. He finished with 19 saves as he earned his second shutout of the season and his 19th victory.
“Any time you limit a team to 19 shots, you’re obviously doing something right,” said Owsley, an 18-year-old from Lethbridge. “I thought we played great tonight.
“We haven’t been playing too well and we needed that one.”
Last season, Owsley, as the primary backup to veteran Chet Pickard, went 7-5-0-0 in 17 games. Already this season, Owsley has played twice as many minutes as he did last season and he is 19-7-0-0.
“I wouldn’t have believed you if you had told me I’d have 19 wins right now,” he said. “It’s pretty surreal and I’m really enjoying it.”
Left-winger Johnny Lazo, 20, also is enjoying things. And why shouldn’t he be? He’s playing alongside centre Brendan Shinnimin and right-winger Adam Hughesman on one of the WHL’s premier lines.
“We had all four lines going,” Owsley said, “but one line . . . really stepped up. We count on them a lot and they really stepped up.”
Lazo torched the Blazers for three goals — he had two before the game was 14 minutes old — and has 14 on the season and 51 in his career. Shinnimin set up all three, with Hughesman in on two.
“We were throwing the body around early,” said Lazo, one of 10 Winnipeggers in the Tri-City lineup. “We’re not a big team but we can play physical and that helped us set the tone early.”
As for playing with Shinnimin and Hughesman, both of whom are 18 and also are from the ’Peg, Lazo said: “Those guys . . . you saw the goals. They weren’t pretty. They got me the puck. I get to the hole and those guys will find me.”
Justin Feser, Brooks Macek, Kruise Reddick and Mason Wilgosh also scored for Tri-City, which led 2-0 and 5-0 at the breaks.
The Americans’ power play, which came in having scored just four times in 34 chances over its last four games, was 2-for-7 as the Blazers took some undisciplined penalties, proving once again that old habits die hard.
Kamloops goaltender Kurtis Mucha, who shut out Edmonton, didn’t see the end of the second period. Mucha, who stopped 10 of 15 shots and had no chance on four of the goals he surrendered, has lost five straight starts to the Americans, four of them with the Portland Winterhawks.
Jon Groenheyde replaced Mucha at 12:20 of the second period and stopped 14 of 16 shots.
JUST NOTES: Referees Ryan Bonnett and Seth Ferguson gave the Blazers eight of 13 minors and the lone misconduct. . . . Ferguson is an OHL referee. . . . The Blazers were 0-for-4 on the PP, with two of those coming in the game’s last five minutes. . . . The Americans, who are 11-0-0-0 when scoring three or more goals, meet the Rockets in Kelowna tonight, while the Blazers play host to the Prince George Cougars. Last night, the host Cougars won their fifth game of the season, beating the Kootenay Ice, 4-1. . . . Kamloops C C.J. Stretch played in his 300th regular-season game, while LW Brendan Ranford was in No. 100.
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
gdrinnan.blogspot.com