Surrey, B.C. – The Surrey Eagles finally hosted a game inside the South Surrey Arena for the first time since November 2020. Unfortunately for Surrey, the result wasn’t a favourable one as the Coquitlam Express took the lead early and never trailed as the Eagles lost the battle by a score of 6-4.
Despite the loss, Eagles Head Coach Cam Keith enjoyed the atmosphere inside the building and the way his team battled throughout the game. “We weren’t really focused on the result per-se, we were more concerned if our process was there. We wanted our foundational stuff to be sound as far as puck movement, pace, activation in the offensive zone and getting our younger guys accustomed to playing hockey again. I think we accomplished a lot of that tonight; it was a lot of fun to watch a lot of our young kids play again with fans in the building.”
16 year old White Rock native Grayden Slipec scored in the loss, along with Rocco La Cara, Ben Fontaine, and Jack Foster. Matthew Campbell had 2 goals for the Express, including the game winner. Dante Berrattoni, Austin Montgomery-Parsons, Brody Juck and Jaegar Murdock rounded out the scoring for the Express in the win. Connor Mackenzie made 37 saves in the win for Coquitlam, while Eli Pulver got the loss for Surrey after giving up 5 goals on 16 shots in 40 minutes of action. 15 year old Angeo Basson made 5 out of possible 6 saves in just under 18 minutes of action.
For this young Eagles team, it was important to see how they’d battle through adversity when adversity struck. Coincidently it struck early in the contest and while the Eagles were able to tie it up twice, they weren’t able to take the lead. Yet despite the uphill battles, the team continued to try and scrap all the way until the final horn. A trait coach Cam believes will serve this team well moving forward while he continues to help this team develop. “The biggest thing for us on a positive note is the kids didn’t give up. They played hard even though we were down. Everyone stuck together, there wasn’t a lot of negative talk on the bench. The body language was pretty good and the team battled through adversity early, that makes us stronger.”
Another positive note for Cam Keith is understanding this will be a great lesson for this young team as they continue to improve ahead of the regular season. “If we played a game today and had an easy win we wouldn’t really gain anything from that. From a coaches standpoint, now I have an opportunity to teach and improve the group. Kids usually listen when they don’t get the results they want. We saw a lot of bright spots with a bunch of our guys, and especially Ewan Rennie who will hopefully AP for us this year and hopefully join us next year.”
Surrey didn’t dress a number of their veteran players, allowing the younger players to take the spotlight in Surrey’s first game home in just under 11 months. Despite not being on the ice, Cam believes there was still something for them to learn as they watched their younger teammates do battle. “I think it was an eye opener in regards to the pace and physicality. When you’re in scrimmages and battles with your teammates you don’t see it as much. A lot of kids had some good battles tonight and had some good battles. So hopefully that was an eye opener for them for what we’ll see on Wednesday.”
Like Cam mentioned above, the Eagles next exhibition game will be Wednesday, September 22 as Surrey will host the Merritt Centennials. Puck drop is slated for 7:00pm inside the South Surrey Arena. Attendance is free to the public, but all attendees must be double vaccinated to gain entry into the building. If you can’t make the game, you can catch the broadcast live on BCHL TV, powered by HockeyTV, and on mixlr.com/eaglesbchl.
