Four second period goals from Prince George made the difference, as Vancouver Giants fell 7-2 on Friday night to the Prince George Cougars at CN Centre.
Tobias Tomik and Colton Gerrior supplied the goals for the Giants.
Kooper Gizowski scored twice for the Cougars, who also got single tallies from Carson Carels, Brock Souch, Jett Lajoie, Dmitri
Vancouver now has a record of 18-26-1-2 (39 points) and sit seven points back of the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference. Prince George improves to 27-16-2-0 (56 points), currently sitting in third in the West.
Giants assistant coach Gaelan Patterson said “we have to find a way. That’s our job as coaches: we’ve got to dig in and find a way for these guys and get the belief up. There are ways to win the hockey game being a little banged up, as we are right now. There are definitely ways. We’re going to search and we’re going to find them.”
Tomik opened the scoring for the Giants just over five minutes in with a great toe drag and release from the left circle for his ninth goal of the season.
Carels responded for Prince George 2:23 later on an odd-man rush.
Just 17 seconds after the 1-1 goal, Souch gave the Cougars their first lead of the night with his 15th goal of the season.
Sixty-nine seconds into the second period, Gizowski notched his first of the night to extend the Cougars lead to 3-1.
Gerrior went hard to the net and whacked home a loose puck on the backhand to give Vancouver the response they needed just 28 seconds later.
Lajoie restored the home side’s two-goal advantage at the six minute mark of the second period, cleaning up the garbage at the side of the net after a Burke Hood save knocked the stick out of his hands.
Less than two minutes later, Gizwoksi one-timed home his second goal of the night off a pass from Terik Parascak to make the score 5-2.
Yakutsenak made it 6-2 with just eight seconds left in the second period.
Vaughan added a third period goal late to make the final score 7-2.
Giants close out the weekend with a rematch on Saturday at 6 p.m.
Their next home game is on Saturday, Jan. 31 against Kelowna.