Six Game Winning streak halted by Cougars

September 27th, 2019
North Saanich, B.C.

The Peninsula Panthers had circled September 27th on the calendar a couple of months ago when the VIJHL schedule was released.  Perhaps considered their most bitter rival, the Victoria Cougars are a Club that the local "Cats" have never been too fond of.  And on Friday night in the friendly confines of the Panorama Recreation Centre, a large home crowd filtered out of the arena shortly before 10:00 pm, but the grins were limited.  The Panthers had jumped to an early 3-0 lead only to come out second best by a 4-3 count when Harkirat Gill potted the winner for the visitors on the power play with only 1:38 to go in the game.

The puck dropped shortly after 7:30 pm and the game went back and forth for most of the opening period.  But Panthers' netminder Connor McKillop was on the mark and after making several great saves, Skyler Diamond-Burchuck opened the scoring at the 11:59 mark on assists from Matt Sparrow and Mackenzie Benn-Wipp.  And only 13 seconds later, the home side would score again.  Benn-Wipp gathered in the puck and moved it to Luc Pelletier in the low slot and Pelletier made no mistake putting a one-timer past Cougars' starter Brett Anderson.

It was the Panthers' Riley Braun who, while shorthanded, would open up a commanding 3-0 lead with just over seven minutes having been played in the middle stanza.  The Panthers played for a protracted period of time with two men in the sin bin and it looked like they would be able to kill off the remaining seconds in the 2nd penalty when Thomas Spink picked up a loose puck in his own end.  The puck was moved up the wall and it went past the Cougars' defenceman at the blueline as Braun skated hard through the neutral zone.  Braun picked up the puck just as Alex Benger was coming out of the penalty box and the two were away on a tidy 2-on-1.  Braun moved in to the right of Anderson and he seemed to surprise the goaltender when he let the shot go to the top of the cage on the glove side.  The shot beat Anderson while the Panthers were still down a man, a nice turn of events for the locals.

With the game and momentum seemingly going all the Panthers' way, an undisciplined penalty behind the play was whistled down and after the stripes did a little consulting with each other, Panthers' Eric Horricks was whistled for a five-minute major and a game misconduct.  And it was costly.  The Cougars' Gill and then Captain Cam Lesergent each scored on the major penalty and the two Clubs skated to the dressing room at the end of 40 minutes with the Panthers clinging to a 3-2 lead.

It was all Cougars in the final stanza.  Evan Easton scored to even the score at 3-3 almost midway through the period and with just under three minutes to go in regulation, the Panthers were once again sent to the sin bin for Holding.  And the Cougars made them pay dearly once again when Gill potted the winner again on the power play.

The crowd was a bit unruly when the game ended, disgruntled with some of the calls in the game.  Coach Tippett was clearly disappointed with the outcome and had a few comments at the end of the affair.

"We are still learning about ourselves. It’s a different mindset when you control the outcome of the game. A couple of years ago it didn’t matter how well we played as we couldn’t beat some teams if they played well. We now have a team that can control the outcome — and we did control it tonight as well. Lack of effort, lack of discipline, lack of physicality, lack of pursuit to the puck, lack of 'team-first' attitude and lack of good decisions on our part all decided the outcome. We control how hard it is to play against us.  Tonight we were very easy to play against.
 
Many fans left the building upset at some of the calls against us. Officials didn’t make bad line changes. Officials didn’t turn the puck over. Officials didn’t make poor passes. We did.
 
You don’t lose, you learn. We need to learn from tonight and get back to Panthers hockey."

The Panthers do not have to wait long to try and get back into the win column as they travel up to Comox for an evening encounter with the Glacier Kings on Saturday.  And they are back at home next Friday night when they will play host to the Westshore Wolves, a team that suddenly finds themselves hot and working to get back into the conversation.  The puck is set to drop at 7:30 pm.