Kelowna Rockets play host to Victoria Royals tonight
The Kelowna Rockets experienced mixed results on Wednesday. Off the ice, they were huge winners when the WHL awarded Kelowna the hosting rights for the 2020 Memorial Cup.
On the ice, the Rockets were soundly defeated 5-0 by the visiting Vancouver Giants in their first meeting of the season.
The Rockets (1-5-0-0) will look to get back into the win column tonight by handing the Victoria Royals (4-0-0-0) their first loss.
The Royals swept a pair of B.C. Division opponents — the Prince George Cougars and Kamloops Blazers — to open the season, with all four of those games taking place in Victoria.
Tonight is the Royals’ first road test.
The Rockets were swept by Kamloops and then lost two of three last week against P.G. before getting blanked by Vancouver.
Wednesday’s setback followed Kelowna’s first win of the season, a 5-2 triumph in P.G. this past Saturday after starting out 0-4 in what some have pegged a rebuilding year — or, rather, a building year towards the 2020 Memorial Cup.
In the present, the Rockets just want to build some confidence and a strong showing against unbeaten Victoria would go a long way in that regard.
“We need to make passes on the tape. We need to compete. In our win on Saturday, we played like the team that we need to be this year,” said Rockets assistant coach Travis Crickard.
“We need to be a blue-collar team that finishes every check and skates as hard as they can. Unfortunately, (Wednesday) night we didn’t do that and a big reason for that was our passing. If we want to be able to exit our zone properly, we need to pass the puck on the tape. And the same goes for our power play. If we want to capitalize on the power play, we need to be able to create momentum and we need to be able to complete passes,” continued Crickard.
“Against Vancouver, we focused a little too much on what they were doing. We need to focus right now on what we’re doing because we’re struggling to do what we actually want to do, so we just need to worry about ourselves first.”
Tonight is the first of eight meetings between these division rivals this season. They met a total of eight times last season, with the Rockets going 4-3-1-0 against the Royals and finishing ahead of Victoria for first place in B.C. Puck-drop at Prospera Place is 7:05 p.m. On Saturday, Kelowna will travel to Kent, Wash., to face the Seattle Thunderbirds.