Motivated by past, focused on present
Spruce Kings earn nod as playoff favourites
Kyle Johnson remembers all too well how it ended so abruptly for the Prince George Spruce Kings last year in the playoffs. The Spruce Kings had come all the way back from a 3-0 series deficit to tie the regular-season champion Wenatchee Wild and were about to force Game 7. But the Wild took advantage of a too many men penalty and scored the tying goal with 19 seconds left, then won Game 6 with just 6.5 seconds remaining on a rebound goal from Matt Baker.
“That was an extremely difficult way to end and we felt we deserved to get to seven games and the series was ours to take, but obviously things happened a different way and maybe it was an opportunity for us to learn when it really matters in those pressure situations,” said Johnson, who had five goals in four games in that series. “We collapsed when we needed to be strong and that can either be a learning experience or a pattern, so it’s up to us to choose what we do this year.”
Johnson, the 19-year-old Spruce Kings captain and one of seven players still with the team who lived through that heartache in Wenatchee, will get a chance to write a new chapter in the team’s B.C. Hockey League history starting tonight at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena.
As BCHL division champions for the first time in the team’s 22year BCHL existence, the Spruce Kings are the favourites as they begin a best-of-seven Mainland Division semifinal series against the Chilliwack Chiefs.
“The confidence from a successful season and finishing on top of our division is huge,” said Johnson, a Yale recruit for next season. Prince George Spruce Kings head coach Adam Maglio works with forward Ethan de Jong during a Thursday practice at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena.
“We don’t feel like the underdog and we have a lot of belief in our room that we can do great things this postseason. We’re a playoffstyle team the way we’ve been recruited and built throughout the year and we really feel we’re tested and ready.
“We know what it’s going to take. It’s really hard on the body, really hard on the mind and hard on the team and we have to unite together to win and a lot of the guys understand that.”
Chays Ruddy, 20, knows exactly what it takes to succeed in junior A hockey playoffs. The native of Cobourg, Ont., was one of the go-to defencemen last season for the Trenton Golden Hawks of the Ontario Junior Hockey League. He played two seasons with the Hawks and each time they won their league and the Dudley Hewitt Cup to advance to the RBC Cup national championship.
“In Trenton we had a great goalie both years and this year Evan DeBrouwer might even top both of them – he’s incredible and hopefully he can keep it up because that’s what you need to go through a playoff run is a hot ’tender,” said Ruddy. “Our forward
group has incredible depth, as does our defence group. We only have six (healthy defencemen) on our roster with Oliver Lester being hurt but we’ve got some really talented (affiliated players) who can step in at any point and help the team out.
“We’re a tight-knit group, there’s nobody on our team who isn’t liked by everybody else, we’re all just a good group of friends who have turned into brothers and I think that’s going to continue to work in our favour.”
Head-to-head this season, the Kings (33-17-4-4, 74 points) held a decided edge against the Chiefs (26-26-3-3, 58 points), winning seven of the eight games with one tie. But the four most recent games in the season series, all in February, were decided by two goals or less and three were one- goal games.
Both teams scored 170 goals in 58 regular-season games. The big difference is on defence. The Kings allowed just 138 goals, a 2.33 average (third-best in the BCHL) which adds up to a plus-32 goal differential. The Chiefs gave up 183 goals, averaging 3.15 per game, for a minus-13 differential. They like to play an aggressive, inyour-face style and will try to use their physical play to swing the series in their favour. As in any playoff series, maintaining discipline is key and the Spruce Kings are the least penalized team in the BCHL, averaging just 10.12 minutes in the box per game, as compared to Chilliwack’s 15.12 average (thirdhighest in the league).
“In playoffs there’s a lot of emotion and you have to learn to control those emotions and I don’t think either team wants to be in the penalty box too often,” said Chiefs head coach Jason Tatarnic.
“It’s no secret, we’re a team that plays hard and we will be physical and finish our checks and I know Prince George is well aware of it. We want our guys playing with some fire and some passion.”
The Chiefs will host the RBC Cup tournament in May and Tatarnic says that doesn’t factor in how his team is approaching the series, knowing if they lose to the Spruce Kings they won’t play again for another two months.
“It’s not so much we want to play well because of the RBC Cup, we want to play well because we want to win a BCHL championship,” Tatarnic said. “Right now we have to play Prince George and they’re a very good hockey team and it’s going to be a very tough first round.
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The confidence from a successful season and finishing on top of our division is huge.
— Kyle Johnson
Head-to-head this season, the Kings held a decided edge against the Chiefs, winning seven of the eight games with one tie.
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“They’re a team that plays well defensively. We haven’t scored a lot of goals against them in the regular season and they’ve done a good job of that. If they capitalize on their chances early they’ll be tough. You only have to score one more goal than the other team to win and that’s something Prince George has done all year and that’s why they’re the favourites. They’re the division champion and we’ll have to work extremely hard to win.”
Chiefs captain Will Calverley led the team with 46 points, including 18 goals, in 55 games. Tommy Lee (18-23-41) and BCHL rookie of the year finalist Cory Andonovski (16-22-38) have been regular point producers for Chilliwack. Bryan Allbee (8-23-31), a Prince George native who played for the Spruce Kings last season, was the highestscoring Chiefs defenceman this year.
Mathieu Caron has had the bulk of the work in the Chilliwack nets, sporting a 2.66 average and .895 save percentage. DeBrouwer, the Kings’ MVP goaltender, was a huge factor in the team’s sparkling defensive record and his 2.24 average and .920 save percentage rank fourth in the BCHL.
“We’ve had a really good season but I think we’re coming into a really tough series here, we have a really close division,” said the 20-year-old DeBrouwer, who just signed with Arizona State. “I don’t think anyone on the team is taking Chilliwack lightly, I think they will be a very tough opponent and it’s going to be a very close series. We’re expecting a long one, but we are confident we’re the better team and we’re going to get the win.
“It seems like for the last month we’ve been playing playoff hockey; we’ve been in the most one-goal games I’ve ever been in for a season. I think we’re more prepared for tight games like playoff-type hockey than any team I’ve played on.”
Both teams are reasonably healthy. The Kings won’t have the services of top-line centre Ben Poisson, 18, their third-leading scorer. The BCHL’s most sportsmanlike player will miss all of the playoffs with a ruptured spleen and shoulder injuries. They’re also missing Lester, a 20-year-old defenceman, who is still weeks away from recovering from a sprained ankle. The Chiefs have no injures to report but for the first three games of the series they won’t have 20-year-old Anthony Vincent, their second-highest scoring defenceman. He
The focus for us this year is different because we’re not the underdogs and we have to prepare differently here.
— Spruce Kings head coach Adam Maglio
was suspended four games for a check to the head which broke the nose of Kings forward Ben Brar in the Feb. 23 game in Chilliwack.
On special teams, both teams have struggled to score on power plays. In a 17team league the Chiefs rank 13th (15.8 per cent success rate), while the Kings are 17th (13.5 per cent). Prince George is third in the BCHL in penalty killing (84.9 per cent) and the Chiefs rank fourth (84.6 per cent).
“I think for our offence it’s not for lack of opportunities, we’ve certainly missed our share, but at the end of the day we’ve been able to make up for our misses with good defence,” said Kings head coach Adam Maglio. “Most of our games this year have been super-tight, winning or losing. We know what to expect in a tight game and that will be beneficial to us in a playoff series.”
The Kings love playing in the building formerly known as the Prince George Coliseum on a rink that’s 10 feet shorter than most BCHL barns and that showed in their 22-5-1-1 home record, second only to Wenatchee’s. The Chiefs would love to at least gain a split and take home-ice advantage back to Chilliwack, where they drew an average 2,524 spectators per game, third in the BCHL.
The Kings’ 11-12-3-3 road record wasn’t great, but it still led the Mainland Division, slightly better than the Chiefs’ 11-15-2-1 mark in away games.
The Spruce Kings do have momentum on their side. They gave up just one goal in three games last weekend to finish the year with three straight wins, including two in Chilliwack.
“The focus for us this year is different because we’re not the underdogs and we have to prepare differently here,” said Maglio, the Mainland choice for coach of the year. “We’re playing a team that we went 7-0-1 against and we’re playing a very good team. For the guys, our message has been that we just have to play and not worry that we’re supposed to win this series because of our record or our standing, we still need to play. With our young group, we just need to go out there and play our way and focus on it and I think if we do that we’ll have success.” Game time tonight is 7 p.m.
Kings in six.
Prediction: