It was a back and forth affair, but the Prince George Cougars are heading into their holiday break with a 5-3 win over the Kelowna Rockets.
The two teams traded the lead throughout the game, before Viliam Kmec scored the winner 11:20 into the third breaking a 3-3 tie.
Kmec beats two Rockets and takes it all the way home for his second of the game!@GoldenKnights | @CarlsJrCA https://t.co/67h76rqvW1 pic.twitter.com/US0ZzMYF7d
— Prince George Cougars (@PGCougars) December 18, 2024
“We talked this morning about kind of giving each other a Christmas gift, and that was to get our team back to .500 on the road,” said Cougars Associate Coach Jim Playfair on the post game show on 94.3 the Goat.
“I think the other thing we did was, we’ve had some adversity trying to play good against teams that have either a goaltender starting their first game, or with injuries, we go into it with kind of a blasé attitude and I thought tonight with them missing four or five real good players we went in there, we just kept our focus on our team game, our team structure, and our compete, and I thought that we did a really good job of staying with the structure, staying with the system and staying with it.”
A majority of the scoring came from the blueline, with Kmec scoring twice, and Carson Carels burying a beauty after streaking past the Rockets’ defence.
Bookmark this Carson Carels goal for the 2026 draft 🤯@CarlsJrCA https://t.co/rDUuZtu6JU pic.twitter.com/WdXdH9ttGp
— Prince George Cougars (@PGCougars) December 18, 2024
Kmec also added a pair of assists on the night.
“I want each defenceman to get one shot per period, so there’s six shots from our back end, over the course of three periods, it’s 18 shots,” Playfair said.
“I think our defencemen need to be a real quiet 45-50 goal group back there and that just puts us up, I think we got 11 goals, 12 goals from our back end by the time we get to Christmas, I think there’s some stats we put pressure on our group to try and perform to and we hadn’t scored a goal in a while and we were talking on the bench, it’s time that we got the game winners from the back end.”
Matteo Danis scored the first goal for the Cougars, and Terik Parascak put the game on ice with an empty net marker.
You’re not going to believe this is only his fifth goal of the year 😳@CarlsJrCA https://t.co/2pYxNVgN3x pic.twitter.com/xhZCDsrJj6
— Prince George Cougars (@PGCougars) December 18, 2024
Josh Ravensbergen had a bit of a quiet night in the Cougars’ net, stopping 17 shots.
The Cougars outshot the Rockets 34-20.
On the Kelowna side of things, Andrew Cristall gave the 3,862 fans at Prospera Place plenty to cheer for, as he potted a pair of goals and added a helper.
The box score is here.
The Cougars will be back in action on December 27th, when they visit the Victoria Royals.
The full Cougars schedule is here.
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