Eagles lose opener
The Eagles' Brandon Pelletier dives to take the puck off the Campbell River players stick during Sunday's bantam rep action in Port Hardy.
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Kristen Douglas
Gazette staff
A heroic effort by Robert Cahill last Sunday afternoon wasn’t enough to save the bantam Eagles from defeat in their season opener at the Don Cruickshank Memorial Arena.
Despite a four-goal output from Cahill, who was the only goal scorer for the Eagles, the home team came up short against their closest rival.
The Campbell River Tyees came out of the gate strong and opened the scoring with a goal from Tyler Clark at 11:16 in the first. Cahill responded with his first goal of the matinee match less than a minute later and added his second with three and a half minutes left in the opening frame.
But the Tyees had an answer.
Just twenty seconds later, Campbell River’s James Severs beat Eagles’ goalie Clayton Ellis.
The Tyees took a penalty just over a minute into the second period, giving the Eagles the perfect opportunity to pull ahead once again, but the Eagles weren’t able to take advantage, instead giving up a short-handed goal to the Tyees’ Domenic Kolbeins to give his team the lead.
The Eagles left the ice down 3-2 going into the ice clean, after failing to generate any really good scoring chances.
In the second half, Campbell River continued its strong performance with a goal from Connor Caffery, to widen the lead to 4-2.
Despite getting more quality shots on the Campbell River goaltender in the second half and picking up their game, the Eagles surrendered a fifth goal to the Tyees on the power play with 12 minutes to go.
The Eagles then tried to mount a comeback.
Cahill found himself alone out in front of the goalie and put it home to notch his third of the game. With just over six minutes left in the final period, Cahill got his fourth goal of the game to pull the Eagles to within one.
Just when it started to look like the Eagles might pull it off, and get the equalizer, the Tyees scored off a funny bounce to erase any thoughts of an Eagles comeback.
With just under a minute left, the Eagles pulled their goaltender for the extra attacker, but it was too little too late, and the Tyees went home with a 6-4 win, handing the Eagles their first loss of the regular season.
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