Following another dominant performance on home ice, the Trail Smoke Eaters hit the road this weekend to Salmon Arm, where the best team in the BCHL awaits.
Regular season series vs Salmon Arm Silverbacks
September 13th @ Trail Memorial Centre 4-2 L (BOXSCORE)
September 14th @ Trail Memorial Centre 3-2 OTL(BOXSCORE)
November 1st @ Shaw Centre (7pm)
November 2nd @ Shaw Centre (6pm)
December 15th @ Shaw Centre (3pm)
February 21st @ Trail Memorial Centre (7pm)
In what will be these teams third meeting already this season, the Smoke Eaters take on the Salmon Arm Silverbacks in a battle of the two hottest teams in the BCHL. The Smoke Eaters and the Silverbacks are both coming off wins against the Wenatchee Wild, as Salmon Arm took both games this past weekend down in Wenatchee. These two sides played some fantastic hockey on the second weekend of the season where the Smoke Eaters lost 4-2 thanks to a late empty net goal for the Backs, and then again in dramatic fashion with just 5s left in overtime the following night. They’ll be looking to prove to Salmon Arm those games were just a fluke as they come in 12-1-1 over their last 14 games. Their special teams have also been dominant over the last month, the Smoke Eaters are on a roll having killed 40 straight penalties, a run that started all the way back on October 11th in Cowichan. The Power play has also been hard to stop as it went 3/6 on Wednesday night and now sits second in the BCHL with 23.7 percent. The Smoke Eaters will take a different team than the one Salmon Arm saw on the second weekend of the season, Philippe Lapointe is back and scoring goals and Logan Terness continuing to shine in net for the Smoke Eaters. It very well could be a goaltending showdown as Ethan Langenegger has claimed two BCHL player of the week nods and has a record of 12-1 in the Silverbacks goal. This time however he’ll have to deal with the deadliest player in the league in Kent Johnson who continues to blow the competition away.
Smoke Eaters leading scorers
Johnson (14-24-38)
Colella (12-23-35)
Ozar (10-13-23)
DiMurro (5-14-19)
Schiavon (4-9-13)
The Silverbacks come into the weekend double header winners of their last four games. After an exciting weekend south of the border with Wenatchee, the Backs return home for a few games that starts against the Smoke Eaters. Goaltending has been the continuous headline to come out of Salmon Arm with Langenegger. He took home back to back Player of the Week awards between October 7th to 20th as the top player those weeks. He posts only one loss on his record and has a strong 0.933 SV% and a 2.07 GAA. The Backs also get a fair amount of scoring from their defensive core as well with Akito Hirose leading all defenceman with 24 points. Salmon Arm, much like the Smoke Eaters sport a strong special teams record. The Backs sit fourth at 21% on the power play and 7th on the PK with 85%. As it usually does, special teams will play a big roll in the weekend series between these two sides.
Salmon Arm leading scorers:
Hirose (2-22-24)
Wakeford (9-14-23)
Poirier (9-12-21)
Rybarik (12-8-20)
Unruh (5-8-13)
Tonights games is the HockeyTV FREE game of the week and it all gets started with puck drop at 7pm and a pre game show with Ben Phillips at 6:50. Catch the game on on HockeyTV or Mixlr as the Smoke Eaters take on the Salmon Arm Silverbacks.
