The Victoria Royals welcomed back head coach Dave Lowry, captain Joe Hicketts and head equipment manager Matt Auerbach, but failed to deliver their returning Team sa国际传媒 reps from the world juniors a win in Prince George on Friday night.
Jesse Gabriele recorded the only goal of the game at 1:16 of the third period in a 1-0 Cougars鈥� win to move into a tie with the Royals for second place in the Western Hockey League鈥檚 Western Conference. Prince George has two games in hand on Victoria.
Rookie netminder Griffen Outhouse made his third straight start for the Royals and stood tall, stopping 37 shots. He was beaten by goaltender Ty Edmonds鈥� 41-save performance for the shutout.
鈥淚 thought our guys played real hard,鈥� said Lowry. 鈥淚t was a game where both goalies played real well. Unfortunately, their goalie was one goal better than ours.鈥�
After playing starting netminder Coleman Vollrath in five games in seven days, the Royals have suddenly turned to Outhouse. That has led to speculation that the 20-year-old veteran Vollrath may be injured, attracting interest of trade talk with the deadline on Sunday 鈥� or simply exhausted. The team is going with the latter. 鈥淕riff鈥檚 playing really well and we鈥檙e going to keep going with him,鈥� is all Lowry would offer.
It was the fifth time the two clubs have met in the last 10 Royals鈥� games. The two teams had split the previous four, although one Cougars鈥� win came in a shootout.
The Royals slip to 24-15-1-3 while P.G. improves to 25-14-1-1, with the two meeting again tonight at 7. Both teams sit behind conference-leading Kelowna, which was 28-10-2-0 heading into today鈥檚 play.
With the shutout, Royals forward Tyler Soy had his seven-game point streak snapped.
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