The Prince George Cougars continued their push for home ice-advantage in the first round of the WHL playoffs with a 6-3 win over the Victoria Royals last night. (Saturday)
Chase Wheatcroft dazzled the crowd of 3,696 at the Save-On-Foods Memorial Arena with a highlight reel goal.
🎥HIGHLIGHT OF THE NIGHT🎥
Putting the ‘heat’ in ‘Wheatcroft.’ @PGCougars | #WHLHoN pic.twitter.com/fUsBTopQGO
— The WHL (@TheWHL) March 12, 2023
Wheatcroft also added two helpers on the night.
Koehn Ziemmer and Carlin Dezainde scored a pair of goals each in the win, while Zac Funk added one.
“We really talked about the quality of our play, especially our play without the puck, the length of our shifts, and trying to continue to sharpen up our game towards the playoffs,” said Cougars Associate Coach Josh Dixon on last night’s post-game show on 94.3 the Goat.
“It’s all coach speak, but I really do think we had that buy-in to start the game and you could see there was a more concerted effort, the pace was better, I thought our defensive play in all three zones without the puck was better, and just that extra effort to be harder to play against I thought was really good to start the game, and that’s something we’re going to need going forward.”
Ty Young got the start in net, making 25 saves.
“We had to kill six penalties, so he was an important part of the hockey game,” Dixon said.
“Had to make some big saves and some timely saves, it’s important for him as well to keep rounding out his game, so you love to see him have success.”
The full box score can be found here.
With last night’s win, the Cougars (33-24-5-0) gained some ground in the race for fourth in the WHL’s Western Conference.
With 71 points, the Cats lead the fifth-place Tri-City Americans (29-26-5-2) by six points, and the sixth-place Everett Silvertips (30-29-2-1) by eight points.
All three of those teams have six games remaining on their schedule, none of them against each-other.
Last night, the Americans edged out a 3-2 overtime win over the third-place Portland Winterhawks. (38-17-4-3)
The Silvertips were crushed by the Seattle Thunderbirds (50-9-1-2).
The full WHL standings can be found here.
The Cougars will finish off their road trip against the Vancouver Giants this afternoon. (4:00 p.m.)
The full Cougars schedule can be found here.