It wasn’t pretty, but the Cougars got the job done.
The Prince George Cougars started their last road trip of the season with a 6-5 overtime win against the Kelowna Rockets.
Hudson Thornton was the overtime hero, ripping a shot past Jari Kykkanen with 46 seconds left to play on a delayed penalty to lift the Cougars to the win.
THORNTON SAYS GOODNIGHT pic.twitter.com/B9dlVs7qUH
— xy – Prince George Cougars (@PGCougars) March 14, 2024
The win improves the Cougars record to 12-0-1-1 in their last 14 games, tying a franchise record set back in 1997-98 when the team went on a 11-0-1-2 stretch from January 3rd – 31st.
It is yet another impressive record set in the 2023-24 season, but the Cougars would have preferred if it was much less dramatic.
The Cats carried a 4-1 lead through two periods and limited the Rockets to just 13 shots in that time, but it only took Kelowna 7:25 of the third to not only tie the game, but take the lead 5-4.
Max Graham, Michael Cicek, Andrew Cristall and Tij Iginla lit up Cougar goalie Josh Ravensbergen for four goals in that time, sending him to the bench and brining out Ty Young in relief.
To their credit, the Cougars only allowed 5 shots on Young for the remainder of the third period and overtime, and outshot Kelowna 21-8 in the third.
Oren Shtrom tied the game with 2:30 to go to send the cats into extra time.
Shtrom ties the game, we are headed to WOAHVERTIME https://t.co/iTJI52wR0j pic.twitter.com/Dc5uaG01MR
— xy – Prince George Cougars (@PGCougars) March 14, 2024
Everything went according to plan for Prince George prior to the start of the third period.
Matteo Danis scored his second goal in as many games to get things started 5:00 in.
Hiroki Gojsic scored to tie for Kelowna a short time later, but a late first period goal from Terik Parascak and second period goals from Borya Valis and Zac Funk left the Cougars feeling secure through 40 minutes.
Zac Funk’s goal was his 64th of the season – now 10 goals beyond the former single-season franchise record of 54 that was set by Quinn Hancock back in that 97-98 season.
He has only played 63 games this season and has 13 more goals than the WHL’s next leading goal scorer.
64 goals on the season, 30 powerplay goals, and 11 in his last 6 games.
These all sounds like pretty good stats.#ALLCAPS @Capitals https://t.co/uDVrN7qqv4 pic.twitter.com/itg35wCbB6
— xy – Prince George Cougars (@PGCougars) March 14, 2024
Prince George went 1/2 on the powerplay and scored the game winner on a delayed call, they were also a perfect 2/2 on the penalty kill – a 5-on-3 kill early in the second period.
Six different players scored for the Cougars, Oren Shtrom had a goal and an assist and Riley Heidt, Hunter Laing, and Ondrej Becher each had two assists.
The Cougars outshot Kelowna 40-23, Josh Ravensbergen made 13 saves on 18 shots before being pulled, then Ty Young made saves on all 5 shots he faced in relief.
The win puts the Cougars back in first place in the Western Conference with a 44-15-1-3 record, 1 point ahead of the Portland Winterhawks with one more game played.
Portland was not in action tonight (Wednesday), but they did beat Spokane 3-2 yesterday (Tuesday) to improve to 44-15-2-1.
The Cougars will try to break their franchise record point streak on Friday against the Victoria Royals on Friday and Saturday, then carry on to Langley to play the Giants in what will be their fourth game in five nights.
You can find tonight’s boxscore here.
– story done by Will Peters, MyPGNow.com staff