Blazers hope to set some tempo at home

By MARK HUNTER
Daily News Sports Reporter
VANCOUVER — About midway through the third period of Saturday's WHL playoff game at Pacific Coliseum, the Vancouver Giants' music man cranked up the Beatles' song Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, which repeats the words “life goes on.”
For the Kamloops Blazers, that's the good news.
The bad news for the Blazers is that they're down 2-0 to the Vancouver Giants in a best-of-seven opening-round series and life - for this season anyway - may not go on much longer. Games 3 and 4 are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday at Interior Savings Centre, and Kamloops needs to win at least one of them to avoid a fourth-straight first-round sweep.
Kamloops lost a couple of tough ones in Vancouver, falling 6-3 on Saturday after losing 4-3 in overtime on Friday. The Giants dictated the play on both nights, despite the Blazers holding leads in parts of both games.
Not long after the Giants had finished celebrating Saturday's victory, Blazers head coach Guy Charron was looking forward to Tuesday.
“We have to realize that we're going into our building and the last few games we played in our building, I thought we played really well,” said Charron, whose team won two of its last three at home, including a 6-1 drubbing of the Giants on March 5. “We have to build on that, going in front of our fans.
“Now, we may have an opportunity to dictate the tempo a little more.”
Charron had no problem finding the main issue with the Blazers in the first two games — they took far too many penalties against a team that thrives with the man advantage.
Kamloops gave the Giants nine power plays on Friday — and did well to kill all of them — before Vancouver went 3-for-7 while a man up Saturday.
Giving the Giants, who had the league's third-best power play during the regular season, 16 power-play opportunities in two games rarely turns out well. Some of the penalties were warranted, some came out of frustration and some were what you could consider dumb.
“I think it can be a little bit of inexperience, but we don't want to use that as an excuse,” offered Blazers captain Ryan Funk, who was in the box at 17:34 of the second period Saturday, when the Giants tied the game 2-2 with their first of three power-play goals.
“I took a couple of stupid penalties and I'm 20 years old. It could be nerves, it could be emotion, it could be a lot of things — we're just going to have to be smarter about it.”
The Blazers actually held two leads Saturday — for a total of two minutes 10 seconds. Kamloops led Friday's game for 50:44.
Kamloops opened the scoring Saturday, Brendan Ranford poking in a rebound 3:37 into the game. Craig Cunningham, who ended with two goals and three assists, tied it 16 seconds later.
C.J. Stretch again gave the Blazers the lead, with 4:20 remaining in the second period, when he converted a beautiful feed from Colin Smith. The Blazers followed that up by taking two penalties — Funk went off for holding at 16:21, and defenceman Josh Caron took a roughing minor at 19:07 — and Vancouver's Brendan Gallagher and Kevin Connauton scored on both.
“Our focus was to end the second period (well) and that would give us the lead going into the third,” Charron said. “Unfortunately we got a couple of penalties and they scored on both of those power plays. If we could have maintained, finished the last four, five minutes of that second period with the lead, it would have helped in the third period.”
Connauton, on a power play, Cunningham and James Henry scored third-period goals for the Giants, and Dalibor Bortnak tallied for the Blazers.
Three of the Giants' last four goals came off the rush, where Blazers defencemen either couldn't keep up with the Vancouver players or got caught pinching.
“Playing Friday and Saturday, we wore their D down,” explained Cunningham. “They're big, strong guys and if they get you in the corner, they're going to hit and pin you. If we can get in there and move our feet and get our smaller guys away from the walls, it's going to wear them down and tire them out.”
JUST NOTES: Kurtis Mucha started for the Blazers, but was pulled after allowing five goals on 28 shots. Jon Groenheyde played the last 16:02, allowing the first of eight shots he saw. . . .Mark Segal made 21 saves for the Giants. . . . Kamloops was 1-for-6 on the power play on Saturday. . . . The Blazers scratched the same players - D Max Mowat, F Rhyse Dieno and F Jake Trask — in both Vancouver games. The Giants went without D Wes Vannieuwenhuizen, F Greg Lamoureux, F Connor Redmond, F Brandon Scholten and D Zach Hodder (shoulder) on Saturday. . . . Gallagher had three assists in the victory. . . . Attendance was 7,082. . . . The Blazers had two assists added to goals after Saturday's game — Austin Madaisky was given an assist on Stretch's goal, while Ryan Hanes now gets an assist on Bortnak's goal.
mhunter@kamloopsnews.ca