‘We were a ragtag group that got a bit of momentum’
Cougars’ magical 1997 playoff run started with six-game series win over Portland Winterhawks
Like the sound of an approaching freight train, the low-pitched rumble of thousands of feet pounding on hollow metal stands could be heard in the dressing rooms above the din of the pre-game tunes coming from the ghetto blasters.
By the time the teams came out to skate in the pre-game warmup the tide had come in and a sea of white populated the Prince George Multiplex stands with wallto-wall fans wearing white shirts, holding signs and waving towels.
“It’s giving me shivers right now just talking about it,” said former Cougar forward Tyler Brough, who was played 58 games as a 17-year-old rookie leading up to that remarkable 1997 WHL playoff season. “It really was incredible, to have 6,000 people stomping their feet and cheering. We used to laugh about it, we called it SOB – sold-out building – and we’d say, ‘it’s an SOB for warmup, boys,’ and it literally was. You’d go out there and every seat was full for the warmup. It had to be intimidating for the other team. It’s game-changing. It’s super-intimidating to go into a rink when they’re that loud.”
The 1996-97 Cougars were blessed with a bevy of future NHL and minor pro talent, including goalies Chris Mason and Scott Myers, defencemen Eric Brewer, Zdeno Chara, Joel Kwiatkowski, Dennis Mullen and Kevin McKay, and forwards Ronald Petrovicky, Blair Betts, Tyler Bouck, Chris Low, Andrew Luciuk, Peter Roed, Quinn Hancock, Jarett Smith and captain Brad Mehalko.
After two seasons wallowing in the lowest depths of the standings the Prince George Cougars made the 1997 playoffs – their first postseason berth in three seasons since the franchise moved to the city from Victoria.
A sixth-place finish in the Western Conference after a 28-39-5-0 season put the 14th-overall Cougars into the playoffs against the first-place Portland Winterhawks, winners of 46 of their 72 regular-season games.
Their 97 points left the ‘Hawks tied with Lethbridge for first overall in the WHL. Despite the Cougars having won five of the eight games against Portland during the season, nobody in their right mind honestly believed they had a shot at knocking off the ‘Hawks in a best-of-seven series.
Nobody except the Cougars.
“It was a little bit of David vs. Goliath and we had nothing to lose,” said Brough, now a 43-year-old Prince George electrician.
“Portland was the top seed and they had some pretty big names with Todd Robinson, and (Chris) Wickenheiser was one of the top goalies in the league. They were tough; they had (Andrew) Ference and (Joey) Tetarenko and they were built to win. We were a ragtag group that got a bit of momentum and ended up knocking them off in six.”
Burdened by inexperience, with only six of their 22 players having played in the WHL playoffs, the Cougars didn’t let that become a factor in the series.
After losing the first game in Portland 5-2, they gained a split with a 5-3 win in Game 2 and came home to a city gone Cougar mad. Local businesses and storefronts all over the city decorated their windows with Go Cougars Go signs and greasepaint greetings to show their support and the Cougars responded by tying the series
with 3-0 and 4-2 victories on home ice.
Stan Butler coached Canada’s world junior team three times, went to the OHL final twice with the Brampton/North Bay Battalion and is the fourth-winningest coach in OHL history and he still rates his ’97 run in the playoffs as head coach of the Cougars as his most unforgettable coaching experience.
“There was a love affair between the underdog team and the fans and the fans knew it was very important that we needed them as a seventh player to help us win and it just took off,” said Butler, 66, from his home in North Bay, Ont.
“The community has to feel you’re part of them and I think that’s what they felt with our team. P.G. loves that you’re the underdog and you don’t get the respect that Kelowna gets and the reason it became so magical is it was so unexpected.”
After two seasons as WHL bottom-feeders, Cougars owner Rick Brodsky cleaned house and brought in Butler and general manager Dennis Polonich to try to create a winning culture in their second season in a new rink, the 5,971-seat Prince George Multiplex – and that’s exactly what they did.
The Cougars, a team that won just 17 games the previous season, got off to a 9-3 start, but that unraveled when they suffered six straight losses on their Eastern Conference roadswing and it was back to the drawing board for Butler and Co. The challenge for Butler, coming in to turn the Cougars into contenders, was to instill in the players with the belief they could win at the WHL level and that took a full season to accomplish.
“We had to clean up a mess before we could go in the right direction,” said Butler. “We had to convince those guys that
losing wasn’t acceptable. By the end of the year I think Polo had made 10 or 11 trades that year and I think in the playoffs
you could see the team we were capable of being.
“It was unbelievable, the amount of people who came to the airport to greet
us and what the fans did is they made it extremely difficult for the opposing team and they gave our team the emotional lift and quite frankly, the confidence we needed to overcome some things.”
Because of Prince George’s isolation from other WHL cities, a six-hour drive away from its closest opponent, the Cougars were and still are the road warriors of the league. Butler says the playoffs level playing field and that gives them an advantage over most teams not used to long roadtrips.
“As soon as you hit the playoffs, now both teams have equal travel, and for us it was an advantage because we’d done that all the time,” Butler said. “The key in Prince George, honestly, is just to get into the playoffs. Once you get in the playoffs, if you’ve got a decent team you’ve got every bit of chance to win as the other team.
“Isn’t it a small world that now they’re back in the playoffs this year and they’re playing Portland again. Hopefully they can get a little momentum when they get back home and the crowd can help them win. The experience these young guys on the Cougars are getting is invaluable. I’m really excited to hear they’re going in the right direction because part of my heart never left Prince George.”