Grandfathers’ deaths rule out Miner

Trent Miner’s encore for his CHL goalie of the week effort will have to wait.

Miner, who won the national netminder honours after stopping 54 of 56 shots in a pair of Vancouver Giants victories last week, has returned home to Brandon due to the deaths of his grandfathers.

He will miss the team’s upcoming three-in-three weekend, which includes a home game against the Kamloops Blazers at the Langley Events Centre tonight and road games against the Royals in Victoria on Saturday and Sunday.

Miner, who backstopped Vancouver to a 5-0 win in Kelowna and a 3-2 triumph in Prince George last week, should rejoin the team next week.

The Giants, at 6-1-0-0, are off to their best start since they were 6-0-0-1 to begin the 2008-09 campaign.

David Tendeck started in goal in five of Vancouver’s first seven games and the plan will be for him to play all three games on the weekend.

Vancouver has arguably its best goaltending tandem in franchise history. Tendeck, 18, was on the Western Conference second allstar team last season and was a sixth-round pick of the Arizona Coyotes in last summer’s NHL draft.

Miner, 17, was a first-round pick, 20th overall, in the 2016 WHL

bantam draft and the Giants are expecting he’ll be selected in June’s NHL draft at Rogers Arena. There’s no word as to whether one of their other signed goalies will be available this weekend.

If they can’t get a signed goalie in town in time, they ’ll need to find an emergency backup, and he won’t be permitted to play unless Tendeck is injured.

Vancouver had six three-inthree weekends last season and didn’t once use just one netminder for all three games.