Canucks need to be ‘almost perfect’
The Niagara Falls Canucks are finally healthy and the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League team on the whole dominated the Thorold Blackhawks in the opening round of the Golden Horseshoe Conference playoffs.
Niagara Falls, the fourth seed in a field of eight, swept No. 5 seed Thorold in the best-of-seven quarter-final and outscoring the Blackhawks 27-4.
“Game 1 was the first time all season we had 23 healthy bodies,” Canucks owner-head coach Frank Pietrangelo said. “We are excited for the fresh start — the playoffs are a new season.”
There were many players on the Canucks who had outstanding seasons, from forward Frank Pucci leading the conference in goals during the regular season to Niagara Falls native Matthew Thorpe, who posted 34 points in 44 games in his final year of junior hockey.
“He’s a 20-year-old and played in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) for a couple of years. He did a good job there,” Pietrangelo said.
The A.N. Myer graduate spent two seasons with the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada and Gatineau Olympiques before returning home. He scored three goals and collected five assists in 68 games in the QMJHL.
Thorpe has enjoyed his last season as a Canuck. He said playing in front of fans in his hometown was a dream growing up in Niagara Falls.
“I always wanted to be a Canuck as a kid,” he said. “It’s sweet to be able to finish my junior career here.”
Thorpe couldn’t have asked for better teammates.
“Playing with this group of guys has been great this year,” the 6-foot-1, 210-pound defenceman said. “It makes my day every
time I come to the rink.”
Injuries and suspensions are inevitable at all levels of hockey and the Canucks endured plenty of them during the regular season. From time to time, shortages forced Pietrangelo to use Thorpe as a forward.
He has been effective in both roles, but the team prefers to deploy him on the blue line.
“He’s a defenceman, not a forward, and he’s a very good one at that,” Pietrangelo said.
“Thorpe’s on our power play and
penalty kill when he plays on the back end, but he played really well up front in Game 1.
“There aren’t many players who can do both jobs, but he is one of them.”
Thorpe is among the nine players on the Canucks ineligible to return for another season of hockey at the junior B level. He said for graduating players, the intensity has increased tremendously now that Niagara Falls is preparing to play the defending conference champion Caledonia Corvairs in the semifinals.
“It’s 10 times more intense in the playoffs, especially for the 20-year-olds,” Thorpe said.
“You start to realize that your last game in junior is coming up.”
Like everyone on the Canucks, he wants that last game to be the Sutherland Cup final with Niagara Falls celebrating its third Ontario junior B championship and first since 1998.
Considering Caledonia lost only five games during the 50game regular season and swept the Fort Erie Meteors in the opening round, that’s a tall order. A tall order indeed.
Thorpe isn’t fazed by the challenge of playing a team in junior hockey’s second season that beat the Canucks 6-0 in headto-head play during the first season.
“We have to be more physical,” he said. “We have good speed and if we can throw the body every game, I believe we will make a deep run.”
Pietrangelo said the Canucks had “mixed results” versus Caledonia in league play.
“We’ve had mixed results with Caledonia, we’ve had three, four competitive games,” he said.
“Then we had two games when we weren’t competitive at all, they just took it to us.
Given that the Corvairs have the best offence as well as the top defence in the league, ending their quest for a fourth Sutherland Cup in five years will be a tough task for any team.
“You pick your poison,” Pietrangelo said. “What do you do, try to hold them down or do you try to outscore them.
“It seems their numbers say they win no matter what.”
The Canucks intend to “build on” what they did right against Caledonia in the season series, but they won’t spend time dwelling on their record in head-to-head play.
“We’re a different team than we were all year long,” Pietrangelo said. “The first game in the playoffs against Thorold in the playoffs was the first game all season that we had our full lineup.
“We’re pretty confident that with this lineup that we can compete.”
The series opens 7:30 p.m. in Caledonia, where the Canucks are expected to begin introducing a few “new wrinkles” they added to their game plan.
“We cannot just go into Caledonia and play the same way we played them in the regular season,” he said. “It’s not good enough, it wasn’t good enough then, it won’t be good enough now.
“We’ve got to be almost perfect, and we understand that.”
Pietrangelo said the Canucks are heading into the series with their eyes wide open.
“We know what it’s going to take to compete against Caledonia,” he said. “We’ve got to bring it up another few notches, not just one.”