By Adam Donnelly

Ferguson builds a wall, Blazers shut down Americans 3-1

Feb 18, 2019 | 4:50 PM

KAMLOOPS — Apologies to the Tri-City Americans, but the Kamloops Blazers were more brash, more loud, and more in-your-face than their opponents from south of the 49th parallel on Family Day, as the home team skated away with a 3-1 win.

The Blazers came out with purpose, hitting their opponents hard and often while out-chancing them by a wide margin throughout the first period.

“We’ve kind of established some small goals for ourselves, and one of them was to treat the last three games as a best-of-three, and this was a deciding game,” Head Coach Serge Lajoie said after the contest. “We wanted to take advantage in the first 10 minutes of the game, of maybe a team that had travelled all day yesterday. We wanted to get on them, gain some momentum and establish a style of play.”

That style of play paid off at the 10:02 mark of the first when Connor Zary scored his fourth goal in the past three games and 17th of the season. Just 5:36 later, Zary would notch his fifth goal of the week to put the Blazers up 2-0.

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“It’s all coaching,” Lajoie joked when asked about Zary’s recent offensive output. “I couldn’t keep a straight face on that one… The game in Tri-City, he tried to do too much. He came off a game with three goals against Victoria and tried to do a little too much. Today, he went right back to playing the way he needed to… That 3rd period from Connor Zary was a very good, mature period.”

After a scoreless second, the Americans pushed back in the third, peppering Dylan Ferguson with 15 shots. With just 1:10 left to play and the Tri-City net empty, on likely their final shot of the game, Kyle Olsen fired a seeing-eye wrist shot through a labyrinth of bodies that went far post and in to break up Ferguson’s shutout bid.

After the Americans pulled netminder Beck Warm for a final push, Brodi Stuart iced it with 14 seconds left, sliding a puck into the empty net to put the Blazers back up by two.

“I thought it was important, the tone that that line (Franklin, Stuart, and Centazzo) set for us,” Lajoie said. “One guy that I want to mention is Zane Franklin. I thought that he played the game the right way today. He played to his identity, which is gritty, tough to play against, in your face. A bit of a Brad Marchand-type. I thought that Zary and Franklin were really key leaders for us tonight.”

Ferguson made 37 stops for the Blazers, earning his 16th win of the year while Beck Warm stopped 26 of the 28 shots he faced in a losing effort. The Blazers are at home Friday night (Feb. 22) as they host Prince George, before heading to Kelowna to take on the Rockets on Saturday.

They now trail Kelowna by four points in the BC Division standings and sit three back of Seattle in the Western Conference Wild Card race.