Falcons hope to be on winning end
Owen Savory has some unfinished business to take care of on the ice before he can begin majoring in business in the classroom.
For once in his junior hockey career, the St. Catharines Falcons goaltender wants to be on the winning side when the playoffs wrap up. He wants to graduate from the junior ranks as a Sutherland Cup junior B championship.
Savory, the most valuable player in the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League’s Golden Horseshoe Conference, is down to his last chance to do that. As a 20year-old in an age-restricted league, he is ineligible to return for a third season with the Falcons.
“For me that’s the ultimate goal every year, but there’s always something a little special about doing it in your last year as a 20-year-old,” he said. “Obviously, this year is the year, it’s win or go home, it’s all or nothing.
“I think all the 20-year-olds here are taking that mindset.”
Savory doesn’t think he is under more pressure this year than he was in his first season in St. Catharines or in two years before that with the Cambridge Winterhawks.
“I think as you get older, you put more pressure on yourself,” he said. “Not intentionally, but in the dressing room every year you can hear the 20-year-olds say that ’Time flies.’
“Where this is the last shot, I think you want to be your best every single game.”
The No. 3 seed Ancaster Avalanche are coming into the conference semifinals against the
No. 2 seed Falcons with one of the hottest goaltenders. In four starts against the Welland Jr. Canadians in a first-round sweep, Ryan
Dugas recorded back-to-back shutouts while compiling a 0.50 goals-against average.
However, Savory doesn’t spend much time thinking about who’s between the pipes at the other end of the ice.
“You worry about yourself and giving your team the best chance to worry about themselves.”
Savory isn’t from the region, but he can appreciate what the Falcons winning a Sutherland Cup in their 50th anniversary would mean to St. Catharines.
“I think everybody coming here at the end of the year knows that.”
Ancaster won the season series against St. Catharines three wins to two with one game ending in a tie. The Avalanche outscored the Falcons 13-12 in head-to-head play.
Those numbers don’t necessarily add up to much come playoff time. The Pelham Panthers split the season series with St. Catharines with three wins apiece, yet they were swept by the Falcons in the opening round of the playoffs nonetheless.
“You use those games to compare what they’re doing and compare what we did, what we should have done better,” Savory said.
“As much as the playoffs is a new season, I think you need to
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look back on the times when you played a team in the regular season to realize what you can do differently and why you weren’t successful.”
He doesn’t consider earning the MVP award has increased the pressure to play well.
“I wouldn’t have been able to get that award if it wasn’t for the team that I was on and my teammates that I play with,” said Savory, who in the fall will begin playing Division 1 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on a partial hockey scholarship.
“You don’t play for the award that’s in February, you play the award that’s in May, which is the Sutherland Cup.”
He intends to major in business management at the Troy, N.Y., school.
There is no comparison between the regular season and the post-season as far as Falcons general manager-coach Frank Girhiny is concerned.
“We’re an older team, we’re a deeper team, and I think you saw that in the playoffs,” he said of the sweep of Pelham. “When you have to play each other night after night, back-to-back, that’s when you really see what teams are made of.
“The one-off games are the one-off games, there are different intangibles that can happen during the course of the season.”
Girhiny, who coached the Falcons to a Sutherland Cup in 2012, said the synergy in the dressing room is the highest it’s been all year.
“I like where we are, I like the fact that we have veteran guys, a lot of last-year junior players,” Girhiny said. “Fact of the matter, they have something even extra to play for.
“They want to finish on a winning note, they don’t want to finish losing.”
The Avalanche, whom Girhiny described as “very dynamic, very well-coached and very young,” are a formidable foe.
“I’m hoping that our experience will be able to handle some of what they have to offer, to read what their coach does,” he said. “I don’t expect it to be an easy series at all, but I like our chances.”
Those chances, Girhiny said, will be greatly enhanced if Falcons stay laser-focused on the game plan.
“Don’t beat ourselves, take the game to them, play smart without the puck,” he said. “Capitalize and try to neutralize their speed.
“We play very well without the puck, which helps in playoffs. If you play good defensively, you have opportunities to win a lot of playoff games.”
Celebrating the franchise’s golden anniversary with a Sutherland Cup is “added incentive,” not added pressure.
“We want to make the city of St. Catharines proud,” Girhiny said. “With the IceDogs playing good, Brock playing good, there’s great synergy in St. Catharines.”