Underdogs again, Giants sticking with can-do attitude against Blazers
The game plan will be slightly altered. Their mindset remains the same.
That was the messaging coming from Vancouver Giants' players Wednesday as they prepared to face the Blazers in the second round of the WHL Western Conference playoffs beginning Friday in Kamloops.
The Giants' 6-3 win over the Everett Silvertips on Monday at the Langley Events Centre clinched their best-of-seven West quarterfinal series in six games and made the Giants the first No. 8 seed to beat a No. 1 seed in the opening round since the WHL went to a 16-team playoff split over two conferences in 2002.
Vancouver (24-39-5-0) finished 47 points behind the front-running Silvertips (45-13-5-5). Kamloops (48-17-3-0) is the No. 2 seed, finishing the regular season just one point back of Everett.
Kamloops plays quicker and pushes the play offensively more than Everett, the Giants said. They will tweak things for that. They won't change the we-can-do-it attitude from the last series and they're not thinking about their regular-season struggles or about predictions from pundits about how this series might go.
Vancouver is a heavy underdog once more. Onlookers might get caught up in how Vancouver was 2-9-1-0 against Kamloops in the regular season. Giants players insist they will not.
“A lot of people will write us off but that's outside noise for us,” Giants defenceman Connor Horning said. “We have to focus on what we can control. Focusing on the little details helped us out against Everett and we'll have to do that again.”
The Giants were the No. 10 team in the national rankings on the morning of Dec. 8, coming off a six-game win streak. They lost 7-1 in Kamloops that night, and they floundered much of the rest of the regular season. From that Kamloops game, they didn't win more than two games in a row until they took the final three games of the Everett series.
Horning said that the playoffs gave the Giants a chance to get a “clean slate and treat it as a new season.”
Or as winger Fabian Lysell explained: “We had the regular season and once it was finished and done and the playoffs came, we let loose a bit.”
One of the keys for Vancouver will be keeping their power play going. Despite having high-end skill types like Lysell and defenceman Alex Cotton, Vancouver was No. 18 in the 22-team WHL on the power play in the regular season, connecting at 17.7 per cent (43-of243). Against Everett, they were at 37.5 per cent (12-of-32).
The Giants had to tweak their first-unit power play quintet in Game 2 when winger Payton Mount left the game after taking a hit from behind from Everett centre Alex Swetlikoff. Mount didn't return for the rest of the series and Giants coach Michael Dyck talked afterwards about concussion concerns for Mount. Swetlikoff received a checking-from-behind double-minor on the play and then a two-game suspension from the league office afterwards.
Horning took Mount's spot with the top unit and had a key power-play marker in Game 6.
“I think we simplified it,” Horning said of the power play. “I think we're getting some bounces too, which is nice.”
Vancouver's power play clicked at just 12.5 per cent (5-of-40) in their 12-game regular season series with Kamloops. Also in the Blazers' favour in that regard is that they were short-handed the fewest times in the league (215).