Last night the Home Hardware Midget AAA Legionnaires bounced back from a loss in their first game of the Mac's tournament, by bouncing back midway through their second.

After a 9-1 loss to the Calgary Buffaloes on Tuesday, the Legionnaires matched up with the Cariboo Cougars from Prince George - the two teams tied 5-5.

The start was a tough one for the Legionnaires, however, as the Cougars scored twice in the first, and three more unanswered in the second period to make it 5-0 not even halfway through the game.

Tides shifted four minutes later, when Rin Beny scored on the man-advantage to cut the deficit to four goals. Hunter Lamb and Kersey Reich were credited with the assists.

Under three minutes after that, Dylan Hull and Mac Gross found Jacob Piller, who found the back of the net to continue to chip away.

With 5:29 left in the second, and on the power play once again, Owen Ozar scored his second of the tournament, after taking a feed from Ty Muench and Kersey Reich, putting the puck past Cougars goalie Marcus Allen.

Piller struck again with under two minutes left in the middle frame - it was the third power-play goal of the period for the Legionnaires, making it a 5-4 game. Reich and Muench once again found themselves on the stat sheet with assists.

Despite the eventful second period for both teams, the game tightened up in the final 20 minutes.

Piller polished off the hat-trick with 12:40 left for the final goal of the roller-coaster game. Lamb added the assist on the fifth unanswered Legionnaires goal, after surrendering five of their own.

"Well it feels like a win right? You're down 5-0, you hit some adversity, and you battled through it and pushed back and got to a place where you got a tie and a point," said Legionnaires head coach Darren Evjen. "It's always positive at a tournament if you keep getting points. It felt good for our team, our guys were happy as well as our coaching staff. It was good for our organization."

After starting goalie Steven Duchscher exited the game having surrendered five goals on 16 shots, Cody Levesque came on in relief. He stopped all 14 Cougar shots he faced.

"Our whole team - there wasn't a guy whose game I didn't like. It was just a great hockey game - it really was," Evjen added. "We really bounced back - we played how we're capable of playing. Even when we were down 5-0, we were playing good. We just stuck with it and got ourselves back in the game."

After the lop-sided loss to open the Mac's tournament, the Legionnaires appear to have gotten back to a style of play and confidence level that helped them to a 7-3 record in their final 10 regular season games before the Christmas break.

"I think the big thing right now is we've got rhythm in our game and that's important - you get a bit of swagger back," Evjen said. "We feel good, and our guys should be up to the task. They feel more comfortable at this tournament."

The Legionnaires have the day off today, but are back to the round robin schedule tomorrow in an early-afternoon game against the Edmonton-based Knights of Columbus Pats.

Puck drop in that game is 12:45 p.m. Saskatchewan time.