Vancouver Giants began their road trip with a 4-2 loss to  Prince George Cougars on Tuesday night, Jan. 8 in the first of two straight at CN Centre.

Cameron Schmidt (and Mazden Leslie scored the two goals for the G-Men. Burke Hood delivered another solid performance in goal for the Giants with 25 saves.

Riley Heidt, Borya Valis, Jett Lajoie and Viliam Kmec scored for Prince George.

The loss drops Vancouver's record this season to 19-15-4, while the B.C. Division leading Cougars improve to 23-10-3-2.

Despite the loss, Giants Associate Coach Adam Maglio liked the game overall.

"I liked our 5-on-5 play. I thought the guys competed hard. I thought we got better: our second was really, really good," Maglio commented.

"Our team is at it's best when we're skating, [when] we're using our legs like [in] that [second]. And then just bearing down around the net. We had a lot of really good looks, so it's just bearing down and finding one.  Ravensbergen is a really good goalie, so you've got to make sure you're making his life hard, making sure you're shooting for maybe some more second opportunities because he's a good first-shot save goalie, so I think we can do a little better job of creating some chaos around the net." 

Heidt had the only goal in the opening 20, just under nine minutes in, to break Giants goaltender Burke Hood's shutout streak at 158:35, nearly eight periods.

Vancouver had a very strong start to their second period and eventually found the equalizer off the stick of Schmidt at the 13:14 mark, thanks to a laser of a shot off the rush.

Early in the third, Valis gave the Cougars the lead when he potted home a rebound just after Prince George's power play expired.

On the same play that he scored on, he was high sticked, giving the home side yet another power play opportunity. Once again, right after the power play expired, Prince George found the back of the net, with Lajoie poking home a puck between Hood's pads to make it 3-1.

Leslie shovelled home some loose change on the power play with 5:50 remaining after Schmidt was initially stopped point blank by Ravensbergen to make it a 3-2 hockey game.

With the goaltender pulled for the extra attacker, the Giants got one good look, but once again Ravensbergen pad shut the door.

Kmec would score from his own zone into the empty net with less than 18 seconds remaining to make the final score 4-2.

Game 2 goes Wednesday, Jan. 8 at 7 p.m.

Friday, Jan. 10, Giants are in Kamloops, returning to 91原创 Events Centre on Saturday to host Kelowna.