Trail hits the road for three in three.

Cominco arena will be quiet this weekend as the Trail Smoke Eaters are in action nearly 800km away.

The Smokies play their second straight road match Friday night in Powell River kicking off a busy three days against the league's best Kings.

Trail aims to put an end to their seven game losing streak against a team that has more wins than Trail has points.

Ironically, over this Smoke Eaters slump, one of the best games the Silver City faithful have had was against the Kings.

Talking to Trail forward Bryan Basilico after that Oct.13 loss he said they very much had a chance to win the game that eventually ended in a 3-2 defeat.

The Smoke Eaters are showing shades of last year's squad who seemed to be able to elevate their game against the teams higher in the standings.

However, unfortunately unlike last year's team, the Smokies are not beating those teams but just simply competing.

And competing doesn't necessarily result in wins.

So what do the orange and black have to do to get their first win in the last eight outings.

"Just keep on working hard, [do] the small things right and hopefully in the end we will get some wins," says forward Jesse Knowler.

"Our team has to play a full sixty minutes, be better in our own defensive zone and score more goals."

Over this unsuccessful seven game stretch, the Smokies have only opened the scoring once.

However, to their credit they haven't quit in any of those matches and have showed some applaudable push back when falling behind.

"We have lots of fight in this team," declares Knowler. "We're not going to back down. We can bring positives out of [each] game."

On Saturday, Trail visits the team that last conceded a point to them - The Alberni Valley Bulldogs.

There are few teams in the BCHL that are experiencing more struggles than the Trail Smoke Eaters, however Alberni Valley is one of them.

The Bulldogs are coming off only their second win of the campaign and have only amassed seven points so far.

Then on Sunday, Trail heads to Nanaimo to face a Clippers squad who could have come into this weekend winners of three of their last five if it weren't an overtime loss to the Bulldogs on Wednesday.

Now, I have never been paid for my opinion, nor would I ever expect money for my two cents, but how the Smokies start things off in Powell River is crucial to the amount of success the team sees this weekend.

A win over the BCHL's best, could go a long way in creating momentum through these matchups against Island Division opponents.

And a long way to putting building blocks in place to their return home next Friday.

 With Cominco able to get some peace and quiet this weekend hopefully it can rest up after a rough start to the 2013-14 season.

Hopefully the Smokies can take this road trip to recovery, return home back in the win column, and maybe their own barn might begin to be a bit nicer to them.