Duncan, BC – The Surrey Eagles began their final Vancouver Island road trip on Friday night and hoped to find some of their mojo back after a tough week. Whatever was on the ferry did the trick as the Eagles offense exploded for 8 goals in a big 8-5 win over the Cowichan Valley Capitals.
Primo Self returned to the Eagles lineup after missing the last 2 games, and scored a hat-trick against his former team. Self and his line-mates Michael Abgrall and Jake Bongo combined for 5 goals and 13 points in the win which saw Abgrall reach and surpass 100 career BCHL points. Ty Brassington scored his first career BCHL goal, while Grayden Slipec and Trent Wilson rounded out the scoring for Surrey in a game where they outshot the Capitals 47-40.
Despite the offense finding their form, the Capitals nearly came back in the 3rd period. After the Eagles took a 7-2 lead, Massimo Lombardi scored 2 of his 3 goals on the night to make it 7-4. Luke Haymes made it a two goal game with just 3 minutes remaining in the 3rd period. The Eagles bent, but didn’t break and Self iced the game late to restore Surrey’s 3 goal lead with an empty netter. Max Prazma earned the win for the Eagles, and made 35 saves on 40 shots against.
With Eagles Head Coach Cam Keith serving the first of his three game suspension, Associate Coach Brad Tobin manned the bench for Surrey and watched his team bust out of their offensive slump in a big way.”I thought we stuck to the game plan for 40 minutes. The guys worked really hard and we made some good plays, but in the 3rd period we went into cruise control and the Capitals took it to us. We dug down and got the win in the end.”
The Eagles had struggled to find some bounces in their past couple of games despite generating a ton of scoring chances. The Eagles were rewarded tonight and Brad praised their great passing and cohesiveness as a 5 man unit on the ice. “Just the puck movement. We got into great spots for shooting opportunities and our defense got involved and activated down the walls. All 5 guys contributed offensively on the ice and we’re really happy with the way we played.”
Despite the win, tonight could’ve been an ugly reminder of what happens when you don’t play a full 60 minutes. Brad was happy his team learned that lesson in a positive result, and it should serve as a reminder to this young team what happens when you let your foot off the gas. “It shows you any team can win on any given night. Cowichan is a team fighting desperately for a playoff spot. Tonight was a good building block but we know tomorrow against Alberni will be tough. They can out work you, out skill you, and out score you when given the opportunity. We’ll go back to the drawing board and make sure we’re all bought in for tomorrow.”
The Eagles will travel to Port Alberni tomorrow night to take on the Coastal Conference leading Bulldogs at 7:00pm. You can catch all the action live on BCHL TV (Powered by HockeyTV) and on mixlr.com/eaglesbchl.
