The Surrey Eagles played a solid road game for 40 minutes, but an early powerplay goal in the third period opened the floodgates as the host Alberni Valley Bulldogs scored five unanswered goals to skate off the ice at Weyerhaeuser Arena with a 6-3 B.C. Hockey League victory on Tuesday night.
The Eagles, by virtue of second period tallies by defensemen Cody Schiavon and Cade Alami, held a 3-1 lead after 40 minutes. However, after fellow D-man Owen Nolan was whistled for roughing at 1:42 of the final stanza, Alberni Valley needed less than a minute to pull within one. The Bulldogs then pulled away with three goals in the space of nine minutes, before ending the scoring with an empty-netter.
“We just took what I thought was an undisciplined penalty and they capitalized on the powerplay and then we didn’t or couldn’t settle the game down,” said Eagles head coach Cam Keith. “I feel we kind of went into a bit of panic mode, then one thing led to another and we couldn’t stop the bleeding. We needed to play a more simplified game management style of hockey. We didn’t really adjust to the score of the game,” as things went south in third period.
In what was for the most part an evenly played game—Surrey outshot the hosts 33-32—the young Eagles team didn’t have anyone able to step up their game in order to stem the tide or reverse the momentum in the third. “Again, we’ll have to put this down as a learning experience for a young group of kids. In the third, I was looking around and there wasn’t a lot of communication on the bench, and there were a lot of guys with their head down and feeling negative for being a part of a goal against,” commented Keith.
Surrey goaltender Cal Schell was victimized by the way the Eagles were unable to raise to the challenge thrown at them by Bulldogs. “Schell gave us two good periods, and I’m not going to fault him for the third period because we didn’t play our best hockey and simply gave up too many scoring opportunities,” said Keith.
The loss was the second straight for Eagles after a pair road wins to open the season, while Alberni Valley won its second straight after losing their first three.
Surrey will have little time to lick their collective wound as they return to the ice on Wednesday night to take on what will be a motivated Cowichan Valley Capitals team in Duncan. Cowichan Valley opened their 2019-20 BCHL campaign with three straight wins before taking it on the chin by a 7-2 count at the hands of the Island Division leading Powell River Kings on Sunday in a game in which they were badly outshot.
