SPRUCE KINGS WIN GAME 7 IN BCHL PLAYOFFS, MOVE ON TO NEXT ROUND
Spruce Kings beat Chilliwack Chiefs in Game 7 playoff thriller
Every year in the B.C. Hockey League playoffs there’s one player on a serieswinning team who does something heroic which makes him stand out among his peers.
Jay Keranen has been that player the past week for the Prince George Spruce Kings.
In Game 2 he found out what it’s like to score a game-winning playoff goal and do it in front of his home fans.
Sunday night at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena he discovered how it feels to blow the roof off the building.
Keranen triggered an electrifying reaction from the partisan Kings crowd of 1,463 when he scored the goal that wrote his team’s ticket into the second round of the BCHL playoffs.
Keranen’s blast from 30 feet out found the net behind Chilliwack Chiefs goalie Daniel Chenard to put the Spruce Kings ahead 2-1, 12:24 into the third period, and Ethan de Jong followed that up with his second goal of the game into an empty net to complete a 3-1 victory in the seventh and deciding game of the series.
The Spruce Kings captured the series 4-3 and advance to the BCHL Mainland Division final against the Surrey Eagles, which starts Friday in Prince George.
Trailing 1-0 since the 51-second mark of the first period, the Kings scored two goals in an 82-second span of the third period to take the lead.
On the go-ahead goal, Jarod Hovde gained the zone and Kyle Johnson got the puck back for Dylan Anhorn, who deftly avoided a stick check attempt from PJ Marrocco as he fed the puck to an open Keranen, his defence partner, whose shot through a screen
from the left side found its way past Chenard.
“I saw Anhorn up top and I thought he was going to shoot and he looked over and passed to me and I turned around and just got a shot on net and it went in,” said
Keranen, who had just one assist in 40 regular-season games since joining the Kings from Topeka of the NAHL
That goal came right after de Jong tied it up with his second shorthanded goal of the series. He pressured Marrocco, who had the puck at the Kings’ blueline, and Ben Brar intercepted Marrocco’s errant feed into the middle and sent a lead pass to de Jong, who finished with a backhand-forehand deke along the ice.
“I was kind of surprised I got the handle on the puck, it kind of got away from me there but I got it back and it ended up working out because the goalie bit on it as I took it back and scored and the place went wild,” said de Jong. “It’s pretty incredible, honestly.”
De Jong sealed it with 22.1 seconds left, scoring his third of the playoffs into an empty net. That came after the Chiefs made a determined push for the equalizer with Chenard on the bench and they came close to tying it a few times but goaltender Evan DeBrouwer stood tall too make the saves.
The Chiefs got off to a dream start when their power play was given a chance to flex its muscles in the opening minute. De Jong tripped Chiefs forward Jared Turcotte 22 seconds into the game and the Chiefs took full advantage. Harrison Blaisdell spotted Marrocco breaking for the net and he teed off on the pass with a high shot into the net beyond the reach of DeBrouwer.
We knew (heading into the third period) we had it in our room to get one and that was (head coach Adam Maglio’s) message right away, to get one, and we’ll get a second one. He’s no psychic, but he may be pushing for that title because he was dead on.
— Spruce Kings captain Kyle Johnson
That came 51 seconds into the game and five seconds later the Spruce Kings were on the kill again while Brar cooled his heels in the box for elbowing. They got away from that unscathed but had very little offensive zone time the rest of the period. The Kings’ power play, sputtering at a 1-for20 clip heading into Game 7, had the puck in the Chilliwack zone the entire two minutes while Turcotte was off for holding but they were held without a shot.
Chances were few and far between in the second period as well, both teams clogging the ice with a defence-first mentality that was pervasive throughout the series. Each team had one powerplay chance in the middle frame. The Kings came close to scoring early in the period on a 4-on-2 shot from Layton Ahac which Chenard trapped with his glove. The Chiefs, on their power play, had one good chance when Will Calverley’s backhander from close range went just wide of the net. Calverley also nailed the crossbar 14 minutes into the second period.
Through two periods, the frustrated Kings could not seem to avoid the Chiefs defensive-end blocks and were held to just 11 shots, while allowing 18. But in the third period they peppered the Chilliwack goal with 13 shots and three of them found the net.
“We knew (heading into the third period) we had it in our room to get one and that was (head coach Adam Maglio’s) message right away, to get one, and we’ll get a second one,” said Kings captain Kyle Johnson. “He’s no psychic, but he may be pushing for that title because he was dead on.
“For a lot of us a Game 7 is a new experience and the best part about what it brought to us is if we did things as well as we did, there’s no tomorrow for the other guys. We earned the biggest win in our team’s year so far and now it feels great, we’re excited and the pressure’s relieved.”
For Johnson, who is moving on to Yale University next season, Sunday’s crowd reaction in the third period sent chills down his spine.
“That was my biggest win and best crowd in my BCHL career,” said the 19-year-old. “They were so loud in such a passionate barn and the players just feed off that and a lot of the credit has to go to them. They reinforced our belief as things got tougher and tougher.”
Maglio said despite being down by a goal for so long Sunday his team did not panic. He said his players learned their lesson in their worst game of the series Saturday night in a 6-1 loss in Chiliwack in Game 6, not to let an early deficit bother them and get them off their game.
“For whatever reason we felt we were actually in an OK spot there,” said Maglio. “It was a similar game to the one in Chilliwack where they got an early power play and the great thing about our group is we have some smart guys who learn from their experiences. They weathered a storm after (the Chiefs) got the early goal.
“Coming in, in the third, we played so many games like that all year, and we got one on the PK, which you don’t expect.”
Maglio gave some heated advice to Keranen during the game at the bench after one of his shot attempts had been blocked by the Chiefs and Keranen reacted by making the necessary correction to his shot selection, which led to his goal Sunday, his third point of the playoffs.
“He made a real fast adjustment and got his eyes up and we did a real good job at the net with some traffic and I don’t think the goalie saw it and Jay made a great shot,” said Maglio. “He changed his angle just enough to get around the winger coming at him and flund the net. He’s been unreal this series and he deserved it, because he’s been unreal for us all year. I can’t believe he had just one point all season because he’s mobile and can shoot a puck too.”
LOOSE PUCKS: The Eagles are coached by Prince George native Brandon West, 32, who also serves as director of player personnel. West was hired in Surrey this season after three seasons as head coach of the Salmon Arm Silverbacks. The Eagles, who finished third in the division 12 points behind the first-place Spruce Kings, eliminated the second-place Langley Rivermen in a six-game opening round series… The Victoria Grizzlies came all the way back from a 3-0 series deficit and beat the Alberni Valley Bulldogs 3-1 Sunday in Game 7. The Grizzlies, the top seed in the Island Division, will take on Powell River in the Island final series, starting Friday in Victoria. In the Interior, Penticton will play Trail and Vernon is matched with Wenatchee… BCHL rookie Patrick Cozzi, with a goal and five assists in seven games, leads the Spruce Kings in playoff scoring.