RBC Cup hosts come up short of expectations
Armed with a roster of 11 NCAA college recruits and five veterans of major junior hockey, the Chilliwack Chiefs thought they had a team capable of winning its way throughout the B.C. Hockey League playoffs.
The Prince George Spruce Kings scuttled those plans Sunday night when they eliminated the Chiefs with a 3-1 victory in Game 7 of the Mainland Division semifinal series.
As the host team of the RBC Cup national championship, which starts May 12 in Chilliwack, Sunday’s loss means a two-month wait between games – a bitter pill to swallow for the Chiefs, who have grown accustomed to long playoff lives.
“It’s tough, I thought we had a real good series but we came up short here today and it’s a tough way to go,” said Chiefs defenceman Bryan Allbee, a 20-year-old from Prince George who led his team in scoring in the playoffs with three goals and three assists in seven games.
“There weren’t many mistakes but they will bite you in the ass when you do make one and we have to learn from that and take a couple weeks off to clear our heads and get our minds from the game and start preparing for RBC. “
The upside of their long layoff is they will be well-rested and healthy when they return to the ice, while the other RBC Cup teams have two months of playoff games still ahead of them – series after series of high- intensity challenges which take a toll on their bodies.
“We’ll come back refreshed and go from there,” said Allbee. “It’s tough to think about right now but when it comes it’s going to be exciting and a fun experience for a lot of us. Looking forward, I’m sure we’ll make a good run with that.
“This series was a lot of fun for me, seeing a lot of people in the stands I know, it’s always fun in my last season of junior to experience that in front of my family here every night.”
The Chiefs players will disperse and go back to their hometowns for a couple of weeks of rest before returning to Chilliwack to prepare for the national tournament, May 12-20.
The Chiefs made it to the Fred Page Cup final the previous two seasons under head coach/general manager Jason Tatarnic and with Tatarnic at the helm got as far as the third round in 2014-15, which makes their first-round playoff exit even more difficult to accept.
“You play to win your league championship, that’s the first thing you play for, so it’s disappointing,” said Tatarnic. “It’s the first time in my time (with the Chiefs) that we haven’t won the Mainland Division championship playoffs and I thought the way our team was playing we were capable of doing that. As everyone’s aware, the division’s pretty tight and there are some good teams and that’s the way it goes.” The Chiefs led Sunday’s game for two periods until Ethan de Jong scored his second shorthanded goal of the series. Jay Keranen followed up 1:22 later with the winner and de Jong put it away with an empty-netter.
“It was just a costly turnover for the tying goal, we just have to manage the puck a bit better – it’s unfortunate, and give them credit, they capitalized on it,” said Tatarnic. “Then we had a defensive-zone breakdown and they put the winning goal in. I thought we were doing a real good job until the turnover and if we get that one back I think it might be a different outcome. “It’s a game of mistakes and that’s how teams win, unfortunately, and good for them, they’re advancing and we’ve got to prepare for our second season now. We’ll get some rest and obviously we had a plan for each round if we were eliminated or if we went all the way and now that plan starts now and we’ll see who the other four teams are (in the RBC Cup).
“It wasn’t the regular season we wanted but I thought our team really came together near the end. We made some changes throughout the year and finally got together in January as a team and I was happy since January with our team’s performance. I like our chances at RBC Cup, too. If we do what we did in this series we’ll have a good showing.”
—