Spruce Kings expecting rough ride from Bucks
Each year the B.C. Hockey League selects two coaches, one from each conference, for the Joe Tennant coach of the year award.
Cranbrook Bucks head coach and general manager Ryan Donald has to get some consideration for the award considering what he’s done this season to shape the Bucks into contenders.
Cranbrook joined the BCHL as an expansion team just two seasons ago and after taking their lumps in the 2021 season, winning just three of 20 games in the Penticton pod, Donald and the Bucks turned it on their first 54-game season.
With 11 players back from that first season, they finished fifth in the Interior Conference with a 29-20-2-3-0 record, just three points behind the fourth-place Prince George Spruce Kings, who host the Bucks in a best-of-seven playoff series starting Friday at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena.
“There’s still room here to grow,” said Donald. “We’ve had some nice wins along the way but we’ve also felt like there were games where we deserved better and we didn’t play up to our standard. We’ve been happy with where we’re at but we certainly feel there’s more to squeeze and that’s kind of the goal as we head into playoffs is making sure we’re doing everything we can in order to maximize what we’re doing as a team.
“Something we’ve kind of stressed since we got going was working hard and buying in to the system structure in what we’re trying to do and trusting that if we do that consistently the results will come.”
Hired to head the 18th BCHL franchise, the 35-year-old Donald had a year to build his team before the Bucks hit the ice and the former Yale University assistant coach (2015-20) used his time wisely, scouring the continent for junior A talent to form a team that this season came close to earning the right to host the first round of the playoffs.
“The games we played against them were very close and extremely competitive and they deserve a lot of props,” said Kings head coach Alex Evin. “I know it was their first full season in the league and they finished quite well in a good conference. They’re young, they’re fast. I thought Cranbrook had a really good season and it should be a good series we’re expecting a close one.”
The Spruce Kings and Bucks haven’t seen each since early January, when each team won one game of a two-game series in Cranbrook. The Bucks visited Prince George in early December for a threegame set and the Kings beat the Bucks in two of those games.
The Kings will step onto the ice for Game 1 Friday after a nearly two-week break between games. The league kept the last weekend open to allow time for teams to reschedule games postponed by COVID infections and the rainstorm in November in southwestern B.C. that caused widespread flooding and wiped out sections of highways. That also forced the league to scrap interconference games.
“We’ve used our extra week off to our advantage,” said Evin. “We’ve got some extra practice time in, some team-building, and we’ve had some rest and we’re healthy so we’re looking forward to ramping up a little more this week going into Friday.”
After going on an 18-point streak without a regulation loss for the first two months of 2022, the Spruce Kings ended the season March 19 having won just one of their last 11 games. No BCHL team came close to matching the Kings’ eight shootout losses this season and they also lost four games in overtime.