Battle royale
The playoffs ended painfully last season for the Powell River Kings. It all crumbled in a Game 7 double-overtime loss to the Victoria Grizzlies. Nolan Welsh knows all about it. He was there that night in Victoria when his Grizzlies teammate, Kevin Mokhtari, scored 57 seconds into the second OT to end it, vaulting Victoria into the third round of the BCHL playoffs.
A year later, Welsh is playing left wing for the Prince George Spruce Kings and tonight at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena they begin a third-round playoff series with those same Powell River Kings, 11 of whom are back from last year’s team.
Welsh wasn’t in the Victoria lineup for that Game 7 clincher last year but played 16 playoff games in 2017 for the Griz alongside his brother Tyler. That helped prepare the 18-year-old Whistler native for what he’s been through so far in this year’s playoffs as a Spruce King.
“It was kind of similar to the Surrey series in the way that we were down 3-2 and had to go into their rink to win Game 6 – that was a really big game that changed the momentum of the series and we managed to get it done in double-overtime on home ice in Game 7,” said Welsh. “We made it to the third round like we are now and hopefully this time we can make it further.”
Back-to-back Game 7 wins at home, first over Chilliwack, then over Surrey, have the Spruce Kings where they are now, just four wins away from advancing to their first-ever BCHL final. To get there, they’re going to have to beat a speedy, skillful Powell River team which needed just 11 games to clinch the Island Division playoff title.
Powell River eliminated Nanaimo in the first round in six games, and the Island final was a five-game affair which ended in dramatic fashion a week ago in Victoria when Ben Berard scored the series-winner 10:36 into overtime. For Brock Sawyer, Powell River’s interim head coach, who moved up from his assistant’s role when Kent Lewis was fired Jan. 29, the memory of losing last year to Victoria provided added motivation for his troops.
“That’s the team that knocked us out in seven games last year in double-overtime and that kind of left a sour taste in the guys’ mouths all season long,” said Sawyer. “So obviously they wanted some redemption and we got up 3-1 and into overtime in Game 5. Guys kind of said, that’s it, we’re ending it tonight and giving ourselves a few days off.”
The Spruce Kings faced a 3-1 series deficit against Surrey and had to win three straight to wrap it up.
“Hopefully we’ll get off to a much better start this time around and head into Powell River with a couple wins under our belt and take it from there, and hopefully have a bit of a shorter series” said Spruce Kings defenceman Dylan Anhorn, who thinks his team is playing its best hockey right now.
“All cylinders are firing. Our forwards have been scoring a lot better than we have been, the defence is exiting the puck a lot quicker and obviously Evan (goalie DeBrouwer) has been a rock all season. We just have to keep it going and things will work out.”
The traditional powers of the BCHL – Penticton and Vernon – were wiped out in the second round by Trail and Wenatchee, and with the Spruce Kings also making it to the semifinals, Powell River is the only team of the remaining four with a history of making it this far into the playoffs. They last did that in 2012 when they lost in the final to Penticton – the fourth-straight loss for Powell River in the championship series.
“It’s wide-open and I think that works in our hand,” said the 19-year-old Anhorn. “Powell River is a good team as well, though, so we have to make sure we bring our A-game, we have to get there first.
“They’re a quick, skilled team for sure, they don’t like the physical game as much so we hope to try and play that style of game against them and get an edge on how they’ve been playing. As long as we’re playing well defensively we should have their number.”
The fact the two teams played each other just twice during the season means neither team is entirely sure what to expect from the opposition when the puck drops tonight at 7. The teams last met Jan. 21 in Prince George, a 4-2 Spruce Kings’ win. In their only other meeting, Oct. 20 in Powell River, the teams played to a 3-3 tie.
“They have some high-end skill up front and I think maybe they’re a bit quicker than Surrey with their overall foot speed,” said Spruce Kings head coach Adam Maglio. “They like playing with the puck, more so than without the puck, and they have good D that are really active in the attacks. They want to challenge one-on-one and they’re good at making plays with the puck.”
Carmine Buono and Andy Stevens are the most likely Powell River blueliners to join the rush. In the absence of four-year veteran forward Jonny Evans, who has been out for nearly a month, German import Neal Samanaski has filled in on the top scoring line playing with Berard and Carter Turnbull.
Injuries have cut to the heart of the Powell River lineup. Starting goalie Mitch Adamyk hasn’t played since he went down in a game Feb. 3 and backup Matteo PalerChow has also had injury problems which forced him to miss the first two games of the Nanaimo series. Evans, Powell River’s third-leading scorer in the regular season with 20 goals and 51 points, has been on the shelf since Feb. 24. Kevin Obssuth, their fourth-highest point producer, missed the entire Victoria series and captain Gavin Rauser had health concerns as well which sidelined him for the first four playoff games. Evans and Adamyk are listed as day-to-day and Sawyer said both could play in the Prince George series.
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Paler-Chow, an 18-year-old native of Vancouver, moved up from junior B to the BCHL this season and has gotten the job as a rookie, playing nine of Powell River’s 11 playoff games so far.
“Injuries have hurt us all year and we’ve just continued to rally and build confidence and win games,” said Sawyer.
“I think any time you’re going into a league semifinal it’s definitely going to be tight-checking and low-scoring, both teams are going to be scratching and clawing to score. I expect it to be some fast, hardhitting hockey. We’re fortunate enough to be two of the final four teams and things get magnified more and it’s just a matter of staying in the moment and keeping it in perspective.”
The Spruce Kings are still without Ben Poisson, their third-leading scorer, who suffered a ruptured spleen when he fell into the end boards chasing a loose puck in a game against Coquitlam Feb. 9. There was some hope Poisson might be ready for Round 3 but an MRI revealed the injury hasn’t quite healed. Oliver Lester, a 20-yearold defenceman acquired in a January trade from Coquitlam, remains sidelined with an ankle injury.
Defenceman Liam Watson-Brawn will miss the first three games of the series while he serves a four-game suspension for his high hit on Surrey forward Desi Burgart in Game 6 of that series.
The Spruce Kings’ power play was much improved in the Surrey series. Against the Chilliwack Chiefs they scored just one goal in 24 opportunities, a miserable 4.1 per cent success rate. Against the Eagles that jumped to 7-for-22, scoring on 30.4 per cent of their chances. The Prince George penalty killers were slightly less effective from series to series, dropping from 86.7 per cent against the Chiefs to 67.5 per cent against Surrey. But they came up big in the third period of Game 6 in Surrey, killing off a 5-on-3 power play that lasted nearly the full two minutes, then got through a five-minute major unscathed.
Through 14 playoff games, Maglio says his team rarely let off the throttle and the hard work habits and defence-first mentality they established in the regular season were instrumental in helping deal with the adversity they’ve faced in the postseason and he expects that to continue.
“I think they learned that if they stick to the process and trust it, good things can happen,” said Maglio. “We certainly felt we were the better team after two games (against Surrey). Game 3 wasn’t good in that series but we didn’t change our mindset and try to push the envelope, we just played the way we know how. We didn’t really let up in three we won at the end.”
Right winger Ethan de Jong, in his last season with the Spruce Kings before he moves on to college hockey at Quinnipiac, was the best player on the ice in the Surrey series. The 18-year-old from North Vancouver scored two game-winning goals and had seven points in the last three games to win BCHL player-of-the-week honours. De Jong was ranked 154th among North American skaters by NHL Central Scouting in the midterm report.
The Spruce Kings finished six points better than Powell River in the overall BCHL standings, which gave them home-ice advantage. They’ll play tonight and Saturday at home, then make the 15-hour trek to Powell River for Games 3 and 4 Monday and Tuesday. The “if necessary” games are set for Thursday in Prince George, Saturday in Powell River and Monday in Prince George.
Only a few hundred tickets for tonight’s game remained at the Spruce Kings office Thursday morning and complete sellouts were expected for the first two games.
Spruce Kings in six.
Prediction: