The Surrey Eagles had a number of grade A scoring chances, and on a normal night would’ve earned a better result, but the goaltending of Dylan Kruss proved to be too much to overcome for the boys as the Eagles fell to the Salmon Arm Silverbacks by a score of 4-1. The loss saw the Eagles fall to 5-11-0-1 on the 2019-20 B.C Hockey League campaign, and still searching for answers as their dismal October continues.
Cam Keith was non committal on the effort his boys showed, but acknowledged the fact his team generated a ton of quality scoring chances. “Yes and no, we struggled in the 1st to find our legs. From the 2nd period on we pushed, we tried, we worked hard to get to [the dirty] areas to create offensive chances. A couple bounces didn’t go our way, and that’s kind of been our story this year. Not completely disappointed, but we kind of put ourselves in the same hole in the 1st period.”
The first period saw the boys come out flat again for the first 10 minutes, and they trailed by 1 after Salmon Arm’s leading scorer Noah Wakeford scored his 8th of the season after driving to the net and putting the puck past Eagles starter Cal Schell. The Eagles started to find their legs as the period concluded, but the 2nd is where things really picked up.
From then on, it was the Dylan Kruss show. His first monumental save of the night was 3:50 into the frame, when Hudson Schandor set up Cristophe Tellier on what looked to be a sure goal. However, Kruss turned around and batted the puck out of the air with his goal-stick and denied the Eagles the tying goal. It proved to be a huge stop, as just 12 seconds later Sam Schofield scored his first BCHL goal with a snipe over the glove of Schell for a 2-0 Salmon Arm lead.
Kruss was at it again just 38 seconds later, when he stopped Sean Ramsay after Ramsay forced a turnover a came in alone. The Eagles finally found the twine 10:13 into the frame, when White Rock native Buddy Johnson finished a beautiful tic-tac-toe play with Wyatt Schlaht and JJ Fecteau.
Both Kruss and Schell made fantastic stops later in the 2nd and the score remained 2-1 heading to the 3rd period. The Eagles came out hard again and had another quality opportunity to tie the game. Ramsay was sprung on a breakaway by Gabe Schovanek, but Kruss came through and shut the door. Later in the frame, William Poirier scored his 9th of the year and put the Eagles down by 3-1. Salmon Arm added an empty netter to seal the deal with under 2 minutes to go.
The early starts are puzzling head coach Cam Keith, as the boys haven’t been able to start off strong in a majority of their games this season. “I, actually don’t know the answer to that question. The older guys should know, and they should be leading by example and right now they’re not. We’re going to have to address the issue because it’s been a problem we haven’t been able to solve, so we gotta figure something out.”
Cam also wants to see the boys get in front of opposing goaltenders more often. “We gotta do a better job of getting in goalies eyes. The old saying of ‘you can’t stop what you can’t see’ is pretty true. It’s a process of getting to those hard areas, so when the goalie makes the first save you can score on 2nd chance opportunities. It’s the only real way to score in this day and age, you gotta get inside the dots and find ways to get on top of the blue paint. We’ve got to simplify our offence scheme down to getting shots through with guys going to the net.”
The Eagles will look to simplify things against the Mainland division leading Coquitlam Express on Friday night at home. Puck drop from the South Surrey Arena will be 7:00pm, and the broadcast will begin at 6:50pm on HockeyTV and Mixlr.
