Regina Pats, Swift Current Broncos take it to the limit
Regina players determined to earn their way to Memorial Cup despite having bye
The Regina Pats know that their season will conclude at home. A comparable conclusion would not be deemed palatable by the Swift Current Broncos.
Swift Current is to play host to Regina in Monday’s seventh and deciding game of a WHL Eastern Conference quarter-final.
Unlike the Pats, the Broncos do not enjoy the luxury of the host team’s free pass into the 2018 Memorial Cup. The consequences of a Game 7 loss would be considerably greater for the Broncos than for the Pats.
It stands to reason, then, that Swift Current should be the hungrier team during Game 7. Good luck selling that notion to the Pats.
“I think we’re hungry,” the Pats’ Matt Bradley said after Saturday’s 7-2 victory over Swift Current at the Brandt Centre.
“We’re pretty hungry,” Regina goaltender Ryan Kubic concurred.
“We are really hungry,” teammate Cameron Hebig added.
“It’s two hungry teams,” Pats captain Sam Steel stated. “We both want it really badly, so I’m sure it’s going to be a great game. The better team will move on.”
The Pats aren’t just saying all the right things. Their actions speak volumes.
Regina has extended Swift Current — the fourth-ranked team in the CHL — to the limit.
Given an opportunity to end the series on Saturday, the Broncos were outplayed and outworked by a Pats team that did not display any signs of Cup-related complacency.
“Even though we’re playing in the Memorial Cup, that doesn’t matter,” Steel said. “It’s playoffs and, whether we’re in the Memorial Cup or not, we still have to work and we’re still just as hungry as them, because we want to win that WHL championship, too.”
The Pats, after all, were two victories shy of winning a league title last season. Steel is one of the returnees who remembers that hollow feeling when the Seattle Thunderbirds clinched the crown at the Brandt Centre on May 14.
Hence, there is a lingering void that the Pats would like to address.
“We’re focused on this series right now and we’re focused on winning a WHL championship,” Steel said. “We don’t want to go in the back door. We want to play every series.”
It certainly looks that way, considering the manner in which the Pats performed to extend their WHL playoff lives on Saturday.
“We’re not just coasting, knowing that we’re going to play (in the Memorial Cup),” Steel said. “We don’t want to be practising for 30, 40 days. We want to be playing hockey right up until the Memorial Cup.”
For that to happen, the Pats must prevent the momentum in this series from swinging like a pendulum once again.
The last three games have been decided by margins of three, three and five goals, with the home team winning each time.
After Regina won 6-3 on Wednesday, the Broncos prevailed 5-2 two nights later. Then came Saturday’s one-sided affair at the Brandt Centre.
Pats head coach and general manager John Paddock is not one who customarily attaches too much importance to home ice. As he has said several times, “a rink is a rink.”
It is worth remembering that 28 of the 2016-17 Pats’ franchiserecord 52 victories were on the road.
Also keep in mind that Regina has already won in Swift Current during this series. The Pats prevailed 2-1 in Game 2 on March 24.
Their subsequent visit to Swift Current was not as successful. After Regina’s Nick Henry opened the scoring, Swift Current responded with five consecutive goals to put the Pats on the precipice of elimination from the playoffs.
So how do the Pats build on Saturday’s showing now that the venue is changing ?
“We’re not going to win the game without playing 60 minutes,” Paddock noted.
“We have to stay out of the penalty box. I think that improves our chances a lot.”
Complicating matters, the Broncos will almost certainly respond to Saturday’s stinker with an improved performance.
“We’ve got to be much better than we were (on Saturday),” Broncos head coach and director of player personnel Manny Viveiros said, “but we plan on it.”
Viveiros added: “We’re hungry. We want to win this series very, very bad.”
Let the hunger game begin.