Langley, BC – The Surrey Eagles (22-19-0) looked for revenge against the Langley Rivermen (27-11-3) on Tuesday night inside the George Preston Recreational Centre. After a slow start, the Eagles poured on the pressure but unfortunately the game played similarly to the earlier meetings of the season between these two teams as the Rivermen won by a scorer of 3-2.
Tyler Schleppe opened the scoring just 40 seconds into the game, but Surrey never relented and tied the game up 7 minutes later when Jacob Slipec directed home a feed from younger brother Grayden Slipec. A few minutes after the equalizing goal was scored, Jacob Slipec took two penalties in quick succession. The latter penalty saw him ejected from the game for a 5 minute major and game misconduct for a blow to the head of Rivermen captain Stephen Sielsky.
After killing off 9 minutes of Rivermen power plays in the first period, it looked like Surrey would be able to find their game and take the lead from the second period onward. Despite out-shooting the Rivermen 34-17 in the final forty minutes, the Eagles weren’t able to solve Langley starter Jameson Kaine until the last second of the game. Daniel O’Neil and Max Bulawka made it 3-1 off a couple chances against the grain and Surrey was unable to tie the game up in the loss. Max Prazma made 28 saves in the loss, and Ante Zlomislic had the last second goal for Surrey.
For Eagles Head Coach Cam Keith, he pinpointed the start of the game as the biggest problem for Surrey in the contest, which ultimately never allowed them to take control of the game early on. “I thought we didn’t have the start we wanted and it ended up costing us tonight.”
There were some changes made to the Eagles offense in the game, as they utilized a forward up high on the blue-line to try and generate some offensive chances. Despite the result, Cam was happy with the new changes they made and how the players took to them. “We’re tinkering with a few things in our offensive scheme. We started to get a feel for it in the 3rd period and hopefully we can build off that.”
The big adjustment the Eagles would like to see after Tuesday’s game is their ability to win battles along the boards and manage the puck better in the eyes of their head coach. “We definitely need to be better along the walls. We lost a lot of battles which gave them a lot of opportunities up top and we lost a few checks on rebounds we need to clean up. Puck management has been an Achilles heel for us of late and we need to continue to work on keeping pucks along walls to limit those high risk, low reward turnovers.”
The Eagles are back in action on Saturday with a game in Port Coquitlam against the Coquitlam Express. Puck drop is slated for 7:00pm, and you can catch all the action on BCHL TV (Powered by HockeyTV), and on mixlr.com/eaglesbchl.
