BCHL: Mark Zengerle notches nine points, earns league’s player of the week title.

A trip north brought three wins and plenty of important firsts in the Salmon Arm SilverBacks’ young season.

Most importantly, the team got their first win of the year after dropping two games to the Vernon Vipers to open the season. Salmon Arm scored a 9-5 win Friday over the expansion Williams Lake Timberwolves, an exciting 3-2 overtime triumph Saturday against the Quesnel Millionaires and a 7-6 win over the Prince George Spruce Kings Sunday afternoon.

Matt Hughes got his first win as a head coach in the BCHL though the new bench boss was just happy for the team’s success as they moved to within one point of Penticton and Vernon, who are tied for first in the Interior Conference.

“It was good just to get a good trip under our belt,” said Hughes. “It was nice to get all six points; that’s a good weekend for our guys.”

After shuffling the forward lines during the first two games of the season, Hughes was mostly able to ice a more consistent lineup during the three-game swing. The players responded with some of the big guns starting to fire as expected.

Mark Zengerle notched nine points on the road trip including four goals playing on a line with Travis Statchuk and Tyler Gubb. The trio generated lots of chances with Gubb and Statchuk having five- and seven-point weekends respectively.

Zengerle was named BCHL player of the week Monday for his efforts.

“We’re starting to see some chemistry which is nice,” said Hughes. “It’s important to give guys a chance to play (regularly) with each other.”

Despite lighting the lamp nine times Friday, Salmon Arm found themselves playing shorthanded a ton against Williams Lake. Power plays were 12-5 in favour of the T-Wolves. Discipline issues proved to be a problem on the weekend as a whole as the ’Backs played a man short 32 times.

“Thirty-two power plays against, rightly or wrongly, that’s too many,” said Hughes, who felt the officiating left something to be desired in Williams Lake.

The power play was again a big part of Saturday’s thriller in Quesnel. All goals scored during regulation time were with the man advantage. Salmon Arm got a heroic effort from Corey Chakeen who tied the game with 34 seconds remaining and then scored the game-winner in overtime.

Sunday’s game was filled with emotion, especially with recently traded Zac Rasmussen suiting up for Prince George.

Salmon Arm led 6-3 going into the third only to see the Spruce Kings score a couple quick ones, including one set up by Rasmussen, to get to within one. David Killip’s goal assisted by Zengerle and Statchuk with five minutes left proved huge as Prince George tallied with 19 seconds left.

The road trip showed the SilverBacks will be hard to contain offensively but again showed they’ll need to work hard from the centre line and in to have consistent success.

“We can score, we just have to do a better job of taking opportunities away from the other team,” said Hughes, who will put his troops through their paces this week in preparation for a home-and-home set with the Penticton Vees starting Friday night in Penticton.