Prince George, B.C. – The Prince George Cougars find themselves trailing their best-of-seven Western Conference semi-final against the Seattle Thunderbirds 2-0 as the teams head north for Games 3 and 4 at CN Centre Tuesday and Wednesday.

The fact of the matter after the first two games in Seattle is simple, you have to get shots on goal if you hope to outscore your opponent, and the Cougars simply did not do that.  In fact they were outshot 44 to 18 Saturday night, 50-23 in Friday’s opener for two-game totals of 94 shots on goal for the T-Birds to 41 for the Cougars.  And it is not a stretch to say the only thing that held Prince George in those first two games was the spectacular play of netminder Ty Edmonds.

Seattle took the second game of the series 4-1 and just as in the opener neither team scored in the first period.  Keegan Kolesar potted the first goal of the game at the 8:45 mark of the second period and that stood until 14:29 when Chase Witala scored his first of the series for Prince George.  Just over a minute later the Thunderbirds re-gained the lead as Ethan Bear beat Edmonds at 15:43 and the period ended with Seattle up 2-1.

The Thunderbirds outshot the Cats 15-6 and played a tight-checking third period that stymied any hopes of Prince George making a comeback in this game.  Kolesar scored his second of the game at 5:14 to make it 3-1 and, with 3 minutes left in the third Coach Mark Holick pulled Edmonds for an extra attacker in hopes of finding the goals they needed.  They didn’t, and Scott Eansor stuck one in the empty net at 19:27 just to rub salt in the wound.

There were no goals scored on the power play, each team having six manpower advantage opportunities.   Attendance was 5092.

The Cougars will be hoping to have more fans in the stands than that to cheer them on come Tuesday night when the clubs meet for Game 3 at 7pm at CN Centre.  Game 4 goes Wednesday night at 7.