New-look Cougars sink their teeth into Portland

The preliminaries are done, exhibition season is long gone and the Prince George Cougars are still winning hockey games.

For the second night in a row, a re-tooled Cougars roster took no prisoners against the Portland Winterhawks coasting to a physical 7-2 victory in front of 3,764 fans at CN Centre Saturday night.

Similar to Friday’s 6-1 thumping, PG’s tenacious forecheck created havoc on an inexperienced Winterhawks blueline.

“You never expect that but you do expect to find out a lot about your team. It is still early in the season, both teams have players missing and trying to find chemistry and we found some.”

“I thought that we would be a heavy team, a real good forechecking team. We have some skill to throw in their too and the fans haven’t seen but they saw it this weekend.” said Mark Lamb, Cougars head coach and general manager.

Carson Carels opened the scoring at 10:58 of the first period finishing off a broken play that started inside the Portland blueline.

Second-year forward Kayden Lemire drove the goal and was denied but some quick thinking by Brock Souch found the 17-year-old blueliner who made no mistake on Ondrej Stebetak.

Nathan Free evened the score for the Winterhawks as his one-time blast beat Cougars goalie Alexander Levshyn.

The lethal combination of Lemire and Souch would roar once again as Lemire finished off a feed from the former Okotoks Oiler to re-claim the lead at 2-1.

Through two games Lemire has four points – he had six in 66 games in 2024-25.

Less than two minutes later, Jett Lajoie continued his hot start to the season as a spin shot from inside the Winterhawks zone by Kooper Gizowski ticked the skate of Lajoie’s giving PG a 3-1 edge after 20 minutes of play.

Lee Shurgot began the middle frame as the first ended, with a tap-in goal off a three-way play that began with the yeoman’s work of Gizowski and Lajoie.

Lajoie added his second of the game off a long pass that connected from a Cougars blueliner.

The 18-year-old from Winnipeg squeaked the puck past the struggling Stebetak.

“Some guys leave and there is not so much of a pecking order – you have to play good and jump in there. Guys like Lemire and Lajoie – Lajoie was on the secondary power-play in the past and he is playing with Shurgy on the first line right now and they have found some chemistry,” added Lamb.

“Souch has been unreal, His speed and creativity make him a tough matchup.”

The bad blood between these two long-time playoff rivals reached another boiling point in the second as Lemire took a hit away from the play and returned while Patrick Sopiarz was on the wrong end of an undetected slough foot and left the game.

After that the Cougars, upped the physicality as Arsenii Anisimov and Ryan Miller dropped the gloves in front of the benches much to the delight of the home crowd.

Dmitri Yakutsenak tallied his 1st WHL goal on the power-play by parking himself in the slot and making no mistake on a Shurgot pass.

Prior to intermission, Levshyn brought the crowd to its feet after stopping Free on a breakaway. The puck bounced along the mask and shoulder before doing a half flip and back elbow poke to get the puck out of the danger area.

“He is a fun guy to watch. A lot of energy. What I like about him is that he stays with it the whole game right to the end, he just plays,” said Lamb.

Levshyn finished the weekend with a 1.50 goals against average and a .942 save percentage.

Jordan Duguay scored in the third to make the score a tad more respectable for the reeling visitors.

Souch finished the offensive explosion with a nice wrist shot goal on the man advantage.

Portland outshot the Cougars 32-28 but went 1-for-4 on the power-play while PG was 2-for-6.

The Cougars (2-0) were able to score 13 goals even with key pieces like Josh Ravensbergen, Terik Parascak, Corbin Vaughan and Aiden Foster away at NHL training camps.

Portland was also without a few important cogs, which included the likes of Alex Weiermaier, Carter Southran, Max Psiencka and Tyson Yaremko.

In an odd schedule quirk, the Cougars find themselves off for the next 12 days before heading to Spokane for a two-game set against the Chiefs October 3rd and 4th.

Cole Waldie will have all the action on 94.3 The Goat.