Sniper’s record run momentarily delayed
BATTLING FLU: After missing Wednesday’s loss in Kelowna, Ronning could be back Friday versus Seattle
Ty Ronning should be back soon. Darian Skeoch will be missing action for a while.
That’s the word from Vancouver Giants general manager Glen Hanlon about two of his WHL team’s three 20-year-old players. The Giants face the Seattle Thunderbirds at the Langley Events Centre Friday and Hanlon said Thursday morning he was hopeful Ronning (flu), his team’s leading scorer, would be back in the lineup after missing Wednesday’s 4-1 loss on the road to the Kelowna Rockets.
“We’ll wait and see, but I assume he should be OK,” Hanlon said.
Ronning has 47 goals on the season, one shy of the team record. Evander Kane scored 48 times for Vancouver in the 2008-09 season.
Skeoch (upper-body injury), a defenceman, also missed Wednesday’s game and will be out of action for at least a week, Hanlon said.
Skeoch had been back for two games after missing a Jan. 31 matchup with the Calgary Hitmen, so it’s easy to assume it’s something that has been nagging him.
Defencemen Dylan Plouffe and Matt Barberis — both with undisclosed injuries — left Wednesday’s game early. Hanlon was waiting for updates on the status of both players Thursday morning. He admitted the team could be looking at calling up an affiliate defenceman for the
Seattle matchup.
Vancouver is already without centre Milos Roman (ankle). The Giants have been relatively healthy this season, though, excluding a shoulder injury to defenceman Bailey Dhaliwal that ended his season in October.
“It’s nothing like past years,” said Hanlon, whose team got just 60 games played combined last season from Skeoch and Tyler Benson, for instance.
Wednesday’s game marked the 26th straight loss in Kelowna for the Giants. They haven’t won there since March 19, 2011, when they pulled off a 4-3 triumph.
Andrej Stastny bagged the winner for Vancouver that night midway through the third period. Now 27, he’s already played more than 230 games in Russia’s KHL.
Vancouver (28-17-5-3) goes into Friday four points back of the Victoria Royals (32-19-3-1) for second place in the B.C. Division. The Giants have two games in hand.
The second- and third-place teams in B.C. will meet in the first round of the playoffs.
Vancouver is six points behind the Rockets (33-16-3-1), who are first in the B.C. Division
The top three teams in the B.C. and U.S. divisions advance to the Western Conference playoffs, along with the two next-best records. Seattle (27-18-5-2) currently holds down the second of those two wild-card spots, nine points up on the Kamloops Blazers (24-25-1-3) with a game in hand.
Five of the Thunderbirds’ last seven games have gone to either overtime or a shootout. Seattle has won four shootouts in that stretch. They lost the overtime matchup.
They are a league-best 6-2 in the shootout.