Logan Mostat picked a perfect time to score his first-ever BC Hockey League goal.
His first three goals, in fact.
Six minutes into the third period of the Surrey Eagles’ road game against the Prince George Spruce Kings Saturday night, the 18-year-old BCHL rookie – who joined the Surrey Eagles earlier this season from the junior ‘B’ Chase Heat of the Kooteney International Junior League – scored the winning goal to give the Birds a 4-3 win.
“Logan has really been putting in the work so it’s nice to see a guy like that get rewarded,” said Eagles coach Blaine Neufeld.
“It was a good way to cap off the road trip. It makes for a much better drive home from Prince George when you can get a win.
“We kind of had the ‘bus legs’ for Friday’s game, but I really thought Saturday was a good response.”
The goal gave the Eagles just their seventh win of the season, and though they were not able to duplicate the feat for the rest of the weekend – on Friday, Surrey began the weekend with a 9-3 loss to the Spruce Kings, and also dropped a Family Day matinee to the Coquitlam Express – Mostat again did his part.
After getting his first one out of the way Saturday, Mostat – a Salmon Arm resident – scored twice more Monday, in a 7-3 losing effort to the Express at South Surrey Arena.
Mostat’s played 11 games for the Eagles this season, scoring three goals and adding three assists. He has also played nine games with the Salmon Arm Silverbacks dating back to the 2013 season, but had yet to record a point.
Mostat wasn’t the only Eagles’ rookie to shine in Saturday’s victory. Gage Mackie – a native of Anchorage, Alaska who will play for Arizona State in 2017 – led the team offensively with a pair of goals en route to first-star honours, and defenceman Nick Azar also added one.
Veteran netminder Justin Laforest stopped 24 of 27 shots on goal to earn the victory between the pipes.
The winning performance was a far cry from Friday night’s affair, which saw the Eagles fall behind 3-2 after 20 minutes, before giving up four more unanswered in the second period. Prince George tacked on two more goals in the third frame to ice the victory.
Brett Stewart, Tyler Cooper and Mackie scored for the visiting Birds.
On Monday afternoon, Mostat provided most of the offence, with rookie Jeff Stewart scoring the team’s other goal. Mackie added a pair of assists.
Offence for the home side was hard to come by largely due to the play of Coquitlam goalie Lawson Fenton, who proved to be the difference-maker by stopping 41 Surrey shots.
“We got a lot of shots, and I thought we controlled the play a fair bit, but we’ve got to start learning the difference between a scoring chance and just putting a shot on net. There’s a difference between an outside shot and a real scoring chance, and it takes a lot of effort to get to those scoring areas,” Neufeld said.
The Eagles – who were officially eliminated from BCHL playoff contention three weeks ago – now sit with a record of 7-40-0-2 (win-loss-overtime loss-tie).
Prior to the team’s road trip to Prince George, Neufeld told Peace Arch News his team’s goal was to win at least five of their remaining 11 games. Surrey will need to win four of its final eight to achieve that goal.
They hosted the Langley Rivermen last night (Thursday) after press deadline, and will get another chance to get into the win column Sunday afternoon, when they host the Wenatchee Wild, who sit second in the Mainland Division.
“We’ve played some good games against them this year – we led 2-1 against them until late, the last time we played, so there are some things we’d like to clean up, but I think it’ll be a good game,” Neufeld said.
“As well, we’ve got two guys – Gage Mackie and Donovan Ott – who were formerly part of that (Wenatchee) organization, so you always have a bit of an extra edge in a situation like that.”
