Roman suddenly the centre of attention
Giants’ depth gets boost with No. 1 pivot back, but they’ll be tested without top goalie
The playoff-bound Vancouver Giants offence is back to full health. Now their defensive zone has issues.
Giants general manager Glen Hanlon said Tuesday starting goalie David Tendeck (upper-body injury) would miss at least two games in this final week of the regular season, which included Wednesday’s visit to the Kamloops Blazers.
He’ll also sit out Friday’s home finale at the Langley Events Centre against the Kelowna Rockets. Hanlon said Tendeck could play Saturday in Kelowna in the teams’ regular season sendoff and was hopeful the 18-year-old from North Vancouver will be ready for the playoffs, which get going a week from Friday.
Vancouver returned to its full complement of forwards only last weekend with Milos Roman (ankle) back in the lineup. The 18-year-old from Slovakia, who had centred Vancouver’s No. 1 line for much of the first half of the season, had missed the 23 games before being part of the lineup on March 9.
With Tendeck out, the goaltending load falls to Trent Miner. Miner, who turned 17 last month, was the 20th overall pick in the 2016 WHL bantam draft and started the season playing midget hockey in Brandon, Man. He joined the Giants after they dealt away Todd Scott to the Edmonton Oil Kings at the Jan. 10 trade deadline in the swap that brought forward Davis Koch to Vancouver.
Miner carried a 2-2-0-0 record, a 4.10 goals-against average and an .888 save percentage into Wednesday’s game.
Tendeck sits at 25-16-3-2 with a 3.02 goals-against average and a .912 save percentage. As of Wednesday morning, he was sixth in the league in goalsagainst average and third in save percentage.
Meanwhile, Roman was leading WHL rookies in scoring when he left the Giants for the Slovakian world junior team in mid-December. He was hurt in his return game in Prince George Jan. 9, meaning he missed the better of 33 games.
Roman was 11th in rookie scoring in the league as of Wednesday morning with 30 points, including eight goals, in 36 starts.
He played largely with Ty Ronning and a host of left-wingers in the first half. Twenty-seven of Ronning’s 59 goals going into Wednesday came with Roman out of the lineup, but he was quick to credit the pivot.
“I think everybody’s been a part of it, but that definitely includes him,” Ronning said of his campaign, which has seen him shatter Evander Kane’s old franchise single-season goal-scoring record of 48 set in 2008-09. “There’s the way he’ll cover me on a backcheck and the way he distributes the puck.
“He’s a guy who can dictate the pace of a game. You just see the way he works. He’s a workhorse. He’s a big bonus to our team.
“I think we’ve been a pretty dangerous team when we’re healthy and playing the right way. We have a game plan set and when we execute it, we give ourselves a good chance to win.”
Roman maintained he feels 100 per cent now. He said he needs to get his “confidence back, but these last games are a good opportunity to do that.
“It was the first injury for me, so I didn’t know what to expect,” said Roman, who was the No. 40-ranked North American skater by NHL Central Scouting in their mid-season rankings for 2018 entry draft.
“It was hard. I wanted to play, I wanted to help the guys. I couldn’t. It was frustrating, but I had to think positive.”
With Roman available, Giants coach Jason McKee has various options when it comes to forward deployments on his top three groupings. He seems keen on having Owen Hardy, Jared Dmytriw and Brayden Watts together as a speedy, scrappy shutdown line, which would let him mix and match with Roman, Ronning, Koch, Tyler Benson and Dawson Holt for the other two lines.
Regardless of how he sets things up, it’s easy to guess that Roman will be a key figure.
“It gives you your No. 1 centre,” McKee said of Roman’s return. “He’s proven that he’s our guy in the middle. He plays in any situation. He’s a complete package for us. Getting him back for us is a difference maker for our team.”