Giants winger to hit milestone against former team
Losers of four straight, the Vancouver Giants could use a positive distraction — and left-winger Trevor Cox has a potential one.
Cox, Vancouver’s diminutive setup man, will play his 300th WHL regular season game Friday night at Pacific Coliseum (7:30 p.m., TSN 1040), and he’ll do it against the team with whom he spent the majority of his junior career, the Medicine Hat Tigers.
Vancouver (17-25-3-2) is in desperate need of a win. They’re six points behind the Spokane Chiefs (20-193-2) for the eighth and final postseason spot in the Western Conference, and Spokane has three games in hand.
The Giants landed Cox, a White Rock native in his final season of WHL eligibility, from the Tigers in an Oct. 28 trade.
Medicine Hat (18-23-3-1) comes to Vancouver off an 8-2 drubbing in Victoria on Wednesday, but that was their first loss in four games since opting to sell at the Jan. 10 WHL trade deadline with a swap that sent former Cox linemate Cole Sanford to the Regina Pats.
Last season, Cox’s 102 points had him second in league scoring and Sanford’s 95 points placed him fourth. Medicine Hat went on to lose in the second round of the playoffs.
“It doesn’t change much with Sanford not being on the team,” Cox, 20, said of facing Medicine Hat, “because I still have a bunch of lifelong friends there and it will be nice to see them after the game.”
Vancouver has already played Medicine Hat once since adding Cox for defenceman Clayton Kirichenko, 19, and a 2018 second-round draft pick. Vancouver won 6-0 at home Dec. 2, and Cox had a goal and two assists that night.
That was the early part of a 12-51-0 stretch for Vancouver that propelled the Giants to at least within sight of the playoffs. The 72-game regular season ends in mid-March.
“We need to get back to where losing wasn’t good enough and the way we were winning was outworking our opposition,” said Cox, who has eight goals and 27 assists in 31 games in a season in which he’s had to deal with both a broken hand and rumoured concussion trouble.
Speaking of injuries, Vancouver is expected to be without usual Cox linemate Ty Ronning and centre Carter Popoff, both with upper body injuries, against Medicine Hat. They were sidelined after Saturday’s 6-4 home loss to the Prince George Cougars. Coach Lorne Molleken said they would be out at least a week.
Molleken wouldn’t elaborate, but that’s usually the timeline for concussion issues. Ronning, a rightwinger, leads Vancouver in goals with 26.
They join a long list of Giants players on the sidelines, including left winger Tyler Benson (lower body injury) and centre Dawson Holt (upper body injury).
Cox is 16th all-time in regular-season games with Medicine Hat, with 274. That would be the sixth-highest total in Giants’ history.
Vancouver is at Victoria Saturday and Sunday.