Hurricanes hit town to battle Royals
It’s safe to say nobody saw this Hurricane blowing into the Western Hockey League. Lethbridge is 9-2 after missing the playoffs the past six seasons. The Hurricanes won their seventh consecutive game with a 4-3 shootout victory over the Victoria Royals before 3,517 fans Tuesday night at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
It figures that the Royals (8-5-1), getting smaller but faster, will be good in the WHL’s new three-onthree overtime format. But Tuesday proved a wash as Victoria’s first foray into three-on-three settled nothing. The game went to the, by now, relatively more oldfashioned shootout with goals by Egor Babenko and Tyler Wong deciding it in favour of Lethbridge.
“We created chances [in three-on-three] but obviously we would have liked to have cashed in and won the game,” said Royals coach Dave Lowry.
“But we’ll take the point and move on.”
Victoria defenceman Joe Hicketts said “not a lot happened” in the three-on-three, belying the belief that the format would prove an end-to-end thrill-a-thon.
“But it was an exciting game [overall].”
Ryley Lindgren solved Victoria’s league-best penalty-kill and gave the Hurricanes a 3-2 lead on the power play at 13:21 of the second period before Dante Hannoun’s second goal of the night, and sixth of the season, tied it in the final minute of the middle period.
Billed as a battle of two of the top-five ranked goaltenders in the league, based on goals-against average, it played against form on Victoria’s Coleman Vollrath and Lethbridge’s Jayden Sittler in a four-goal first period. It was highlighted by a quick Lethbridge counter at 37 seconds by Brayden Burke and a snappy Russian-to-Russian connection by Royals defenceman Marsel Ibragimov to forward Vladimir Bobylev. The other opening-period goals came from Hurricanes captain Tyler Wong, his 13th of the season, and Hannoun’s first of the night, on an assist by Alex Forsberg.
Sittler, the former Royal, made 15 saves before being replaced in the third period by six-foot-four sophomore Stuart Skinner, who made 15 saves as the Royals unloaded pucks on him in the final period. Vollrath made 20 saves, but Skinner proved to be the goal- tending story of the night. He hasn’t even turned 17 yet and is going to be a good one.
“[Skinner] closed the door and game them a chance to win,” said Lowry.
Hicketts said he didn’t even know he wasn’t still facing Sittler until about five minutes remaining in the third period: “Whatever they did [Lethbridge goaltending change], it worked.”
The Royals leave this morning on the 7 a.m. ferry to begin a 5,000-plus kilometre, six-game road trip through Saskatchewan and Manitoba that begins Friday in Prince Albert.
ICE CHIPS: The Royals blue line was a bit thin with Ryan Gagnon (three to seven days) and Jordan Wharrie (week-to-week) out with injuries and rookie Scott Walford away with Canada Black at the 2015 World U-17 Challenge.