Royals hope to heat up at Giants’ expense
GAME DAY: VICTORIA AT VANCOUVER
7:30 p.m. at the Langley Events Centre
TV: Sportsnet / Radio: The Zone 91.3 FM
If this was a lottery ticket, the Victoria Royals might look at it as a Pick Six.
That’s the number of lowhanging Western Hockey League points just waiting to be plucked over the next three days against the lowly Vancouver Giants tonight in Langley and Saturday and Sunday at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
Not that the playoffs look in doubt for Victoria even now. But the seventh-place Royals (32-23-5) are 10 points clear of ninth-place Spokane, with 10 games remaining, and accumulating maximum points this weekend against the Giants will pretty much sew up one of the eight conference postseason berths for the Royals.
“This is the most important weekend of our season,” said Royals coach Dave Lowry.
The Western Conference lastplace Giants are 19-36-5 and the only team in the conference with a losing record. They are a whopping 25 points adrift of a playoff spot and even 16 points out of ninth place. Not that they aren’t used to this. It’s a foregone conclusion Vancouver will miss the playoffs for the third consecutive season and fourth time in the past five years. The Giants traded four veterans last month in an all-out rebuild and have been without injured high second-round Edmonton Oilers draft pick Tyler Benson for most of the season. This was not exactly the ideal marketing scenario the Giants envisioned when moving this season into the Langley Events Centre from the Pacific Coliseum.
The Royals are 5-0-1 against Vancouver this season in their annual 10-game cross-strait derby and swept the Giants in a similar three-games-in-three-days set late last month.
Victoria must guard against complacency. Lowry likened it to the Royals’ previous victory last Saturday in Cranbrook against the WHL overall bottom-dwelling Kootenay Ice: “We were expected to win . . . in those situations, you better make sure you are good.”
Added Lowry: “Kootenay played us hard and that turned out to be a tough game. The Giants, too, are staying in games. Their players are playing for opportunities for next season. For us, there are only 10 games left and we better make sure we’re playing our best hockey as we get into the second season [playoffs].”
Lowry, meanwhile, frankly acknowledged the extensive challenge of heading into the stretch drive with three significant Royals players injured. Forward Tyler Soy is listed week to week while forward Ryan Peckford and defenceman Chaz Reddekopp are both out five-to-six weeks.
In terms of quality drop on the roster, consider that Soy (Anaheim Ducks) and Reddekopp (Los Angeles Kings) are both NHL draft picks and the previously lightly regarded Peckford was having a breakout season and came from practically unnoticed to projected as the 87th-ranked North American skater for the 2017 NHL draft.
“You don’t envision having injuries of this extent at this point,” said a candid Lowry.
The line about this being an opportunity for others is a sports cliché but no less true because of it. Right now for the Royals, it’s not an opportunity, but a clear necessity that others step up.