Giants on a roll? You better `belief' it
Feisty Thorpe says there's no quit in team down 2-1 against favoured Blazers in WHL playoffs
The Vancouver Giants believe in themselves. They don't care if you don't believe. There were various points in their regular season, frankly, where they certainly appeared to be of that mindset, too.
But they have belief now, and it's a powerful thing. Vancouver edged the Kamloops Blazers 3-2 on Tuesday at the Langley Events Centre, cutting the Blazers' lead in their best-of-seven Western Hockey League Western Conference semifinal to 2-1.
Game 4 is Thursday at the LEC, with Game 5 going Friday at the Sandman Centre in Kamloops.
Vancouver (24-39-5-0) grabbed the eighth and final playoff spot out of the West by a single point on the final night of the regular season, and finished 46 points back of the second-place Blazers (4817-3-0) in league play.
The Giants already pulled off one of the greatest upsets in WHL history in the opening round, beating the first-place Everett Silvertips (at 45-13-55, 47 points in front of the Giants) in six games. Vancouver players insisted afterward they weren't satisfied with that, and the evidence is mounting to support that it was more than just reciting what they thought was the proper thing to say.
Credit belief. Giants coach Michael Dyck does.
“It's everything. It's the paint on the target,” Dyck said, pointing to winning being the bull's-eye. “Unless you have that vision and that belief, you really don't have anything to play for.
“It's been rolling like this for a couple of weeks now or maybe even before that . ... We had started to develop a lot of chemistry and belief in our group.”
Vancouver centre Ty Thorpe added: “There's no quit in us. We've got belief in that room that we can do it and that's the most important thing. We found it in the last series and now the message in the room is we've got the guys to do it and when we play the right way we can beat anybody.”
Vancouver landed Thorpe, who turned 20 in January, from his hometown Brandon Wheat Kings in an August trade for a conditional sixthround pick in the 2023 WHL draft, and he's been a part of their core group all season. When Thorpe's right, he's always around the puck, always in the centre of the action. He's feisty and edgy.
Thorpe was one of the better Giants on Tuesday. That included teaming with Fabian Lysell to set up Alex Cotton for the game winner with 3:24 remaining, coming a mere nine seconds into a power play. And it included scoring a power-play goal of his own at 15:55 of the second period, banking a shot in off the skate of Kamloops defenceman Viktor Persson during a scramble.
Thorpe was one of Vancouver's top players in a 4-3 loss in Game 2 on Saturday, too. Thorpe's night included being assessed a checking to the head minor penalty at 1:03 of the third period, thus negating the 1:47 two-man advantage that Vancouver came into the frame with and the Blazers ahead 4-3. With the score the same and Vancouver pulling its goalie in favour of an extra attacker, Thorpe was again whistled for a slashing minor penalty with 1:21 to go.
Thorpe staying the course and not losing focus, despite how Game 2 played out, is something you would think Dyck will be able to sell to his team moving forward.
“It's difficult, but you can't change the way you play,” Thorpe said. “Those things are sometimes out of your control. You just have to stick with it. I just have to play to my game, keep walking that line and keep playing hard every shift.”
The 2-for-2 power-play night for Vancouver marked its first man-advantage goals of this series. The Giants were 0-of-8 in the opening two games. Their power play had been crucial in the Everett series, connecting at 37.5 per cent (12-of-32), a boost from the 17.7 per cent (43-of-243) it performed at through the 68-game regular season.
Vancouver did do extra work on the power play at Monday's practice and Cotton talked afterward about how the Giants needed to spend less time passing and start getting pucks and bodies to the net quicker.
Cotton's goal came nine seconds into the man advantage and Thorpe's was 30 seconds in. That's even more for Dyck to build upon in addressing his players.
“We knew we had to get lots of shots, lots of traffic and we were moving the puck quick,” Thorpe said.