Adam Goody's first junior hockey victory between the pipes was a critical one for the Port Moody Panthers.
The 6-0 shutout win over the Surrey Knights Wednesday night (Nov. 24) ended an eight-game losing streak, which was also the 19-year-old goaltender's fourth start of the 2021-22 season.
He turned away all 34 shots he faced and Panthers general manager Brian Wiebe tells the Tri-City News his players have worked really hard in recent weeks to finally get back in the win column.
"Adam was definitely solid but overall, the players in front of him did a good job in limiting the Knights' number of high percentage scoring chances," he said in an interview.
Surrey product Sukhraj Narwal led the way with a three-point performance for the Panthers, including a goal and two assists.
Brando Klot lit two lamps for a second straight contest, both of which were three minutes apart late in the final period. Joshua Noh, Andrew Kim and Derek Leroux were the other goal-scorers.
Despite the first clean sheet since January 2020, it's only the third win of the year for Port Moody as their record sits at 3-21.
The team is last in the Tom Shaw Conference of the Pacific Junior 'B' Hockey League (PJHL), but are one point better than Surrey whom they've won the season series 2-0, and 10 games have been decided by two goals or less.
The Panthers, however, are finding the back of the net with 79 goals to date — that's more than five other PJHL teams across the 13-club competition.
"We've been ravaged by injuries to our forward group this season and against the Knights, we were still missing key contributors in David Wang, Connor Hughes, Jack Graham, and Dong Eun Lee," Wiebe explained as the Panthers also endured a 13-game losing streak between it's first and second W's of the season.
However, "the affiliates we've used this season have done an excellent job filling in but we're confident our record would look different if we had a healthy regular lineup more often than not."
With 20 more games left on the year, Wiebe is hoping the restored offensive core can gain the confidence and use it as a driving factor to garner as many wins as possible before the final buzzer.
"We have 20 out of the 25 players on our roster navigating through their first full season in the PJHL, so as they continue to get more comfortable and keep putting in the efforts they have been, the results on the ice will follow."
The Panthers continue their current four-game road trip Saturday (Nov. 27) in North Vancouver against the PJHL top-seeded Wolf Pack before visiting Delta on Tuesday (Nov. 30) to take on the Ice Hawks.
Port Moody returns to the City of the Arts for a brief two-game homestand on Dec. 4, 7:45 p.m. against the Grandview Steelers and on Dec. 7, 8 p.m. against the White Rock Whalers.
