Surrey, B.C. – The Surrey Eagles (13-10-0) came into tonight’s game looking to extend their winning streak to 6 games and improve their Teddy Bear Toss record to 4-0 as they hosted the Alberni Valley Bulldogs (14-8-3). The night didn’t go as planned as everything which could go wrong, did go wrong in a tough 7-2 loss inside the South Surrey Arena.
It was an unusually rough night for the Eagles starting goaltender Max Prazma, who had a number of pucks skip past him en-route to giving up 7 goals on 28 shots against for a goaltender who had been red hot since November. Jake Bongo had Teddy Bear Toss goal and set up a beautiful Michael Abgrall tally, but the Eagles were unable to finish any of their chances from the Abgrall goal onwards. Surrey finished 0 for 3 on the powerplay despite generating a lot of quality looks throughout the game.
While the score suggested a blowout, it didn’t feel like that during the game. Surrey played hard, and generated a lot more looks down low despite only getting 25 shots on goal. Hobie Hedquist was terrific for the Bulldogs, and stopped 23 shots en route to his 2nd win against the Eagles this season.
For Eagles Head Coach Cam Keith, he was mostly up-beat after the game despite the lopsided score. “It just seemed that any negative thing which could happen did happen. A couple of unlucky bounces for Prazma early, and we just couldn’t get past the barrier and get some goals. The kids worked really hard but just couldn’t finish.”
Unlike the Eagles 5-0 loss to the Bulldogs on November 5th, the team played hard from start to finish. For the Eagles Head Coach, that’s a reason to look at this game more favourably than the loss a month and a half ago. “We generated a lot of looks off of hard work. Our cycle was working, the guys never gave up and those are really big positives moving forward. As long as we stay focused on the process, we played some real good hockey against a really good hockey team and we’ll get another chance against them later on this season.”
However, in a defeat like this one there are always moments to take out of the game. For Cam, the biggest thing for him is the hope this group doesn’t fall back to how they were playing before their 5 game win streak and revert back to their play from the beginning of the season. “We have to stay even keeled with our emotions. We’ve felt really good with our winning streak, and when we face a loss we can’t dive back down to feeling too bad for ourselves. We need to keep our emotions out of it, and sweep the game under the rug and move forward against a tough Langley team who we’ve been excited to play since the last time we lost at home.”
The next Eagles game will be against the Coastal Conference leading Langley Rivermen inside the George Preston Arena tomorrow night. Puck drop is slated for 7:15pm, and you can watch the broadcast live on BCHL TV (Powered by HockeyTV), and on mixlr.com/eaglesbchl.
