Chilliwack, B.C. – The Surrey Eagles (3-5-0) looked for their 3rd win in a row on Saturday night against the Chilliwack Chiefs (4-4-0). Unfortunately, Surrey started slow and never recovered in a 5-3 loss against the Chiefs. The big story of the night was the Eagles inability to kill off a Chilliwack powerplay, as the Chiefs went 3-4 with the man advantage.
Eagles Head Coach Cam Keith was blunt in his assessment of the game. “Poor start. Our guys weren’t ready to play. We just couldn’t find our legs tonight and even though we had a little surge at the end it was too little too late.” Surrey gave up the first 2 goals of the game to Brett Rylance and AJ Lacroix in the first period, and were never able to battle back in the contest. Ethan Bowen, Abram Wiebe, and Cameron Johnson rounded out the scoring for the Chiefs. Grant Riley made 22 saves for the win.
Jake Bongo scored for Surrey in the loss along with Michael Abgrall and Primo Self, who scored his 1st goal as an Eagle on the powerplay in the loss. Max Prazma’s struggles continued against the Chiefs, as he gave up 5 goals on 30 shots against.
The Eagles penalty kill struggled to kill penalties against the vaunted Chiefs powerplay, which continued to click at a high rate against Surrey. When asked about what his team could do better, Cam again was blunt in his assessment. “Be more disciplined. We took unnecessary penalties in the neutral and offensive zones. We need to minimize those penalties so we can do a better job on the penalty kill.”
However, one thing the Eagles did well at tonight was battling through adversity. The Eagles lost Jimmy Darby during the game, and at one point were down two defenseman when Drew Tsakounis left the bench in the 2nd period. The team could’ve folded at that point but they continued to battle despite not having their best night on the ice. That sat well with Cam, who noted the positives from the game despite the effort. “I thought our defense did a tremendous job of managing their ice. They almost got into a zone where they were able to play their best hockey. Our defense did a good job tonight.”
The Eagles will travel back to Chilliwack on Wednesday, November 3rd in an effort to get revenge. Puck drop is slated for 7:00pm inside the Chilliwack Coliseum, and you can catch the broadcast live on BCHL TV (Powered by HockeyTV) and on mixlr.com/eaglesbchl.
