By Earl Seitz

Blazers lose, Prince George ends 17 game losing streak.

Feb 22, 2019 | 9:40 PM

KAMLOOPS — The Kamloops Blazers gained a point, but lost a valuable point in a close playoff race, in a 2-1 shootout loss to the Prince George Cougars on Friday night.

Prince George opened the scoring with a power-play goal by Josh Maser at 8:13 of the first period.

Cougars netminder Taylor Gauthier stymied the Blazers until 13:16 of the third when Zane Franklin scored his 26th of the season.

With nothing settled in overtime, the Cougars outscored the Blazers 2-0 in the shootout on goals by Ethan Browne and Vladislav Mikhalchuk.

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Gauthier was a standout in the Prince George net, stopping 41 shots, and two more in the shootout off Connor Zary and Zane Franklin.

Dylan Ferguson had 31 saves in the Blazers net.

“I look at it as a lesson learned,” says head coach Serge Lajoie. “You can’t play the game 20 minutes and expect to get more than we got. I would like to be able to tell our guys that that was a really good third and we pushed — but I look at the 40 minutes that were squandered. I think we played kitty bar the door and waited to see what would happen. We got pushed around in our rink.”

Outshot 25-20 in the first two periods, the Blazers outshot the Cougars 19-5 in the third, but could only get one past Gauthier.

Kelowna and Seattle both won, dropping the Blazers five points behind Kelowna for third place in the B.C. Division and four points back of Seattle for the second wild card.

The Blazers will be in Kelowna to face the Rockets Saturday night.

Last nights win snapped a 17 game losing streak for Prince George.