Favoured Blazers grab 2-0 series lead on Giants

The Vancouver Giants showed once again that they're a better team than they displayed in the regular season. They just didn't show enough to beat the Kamloops Blazers.

The No. 2 seeded Blazers edged the No. 8 Giants 4-3 on Saturday in front of 4,192 at the Sandman Centre to take a 2-0 lead in the best-ofseven WHL Western Conference semifinals. Game 3 is Tuesday at the Langley Events Centre.

Kamloops won the opener 3-1 on Friday, also in Kamloops.

Vancouver has played well. The Blazers have played better.

The teams weren't close in the regular season. Vancouver (24-395-0) finished 46 points behind the Blazers (48-17-3-0). That included Kamloops going 10-1-1-0 against Vancouver.

The Giants beat the No. 1 Everett Silvertips (45-13-5-5) in six games in the quarterfinals, becoming the first No. 8 to beat a No. 1 in the first round since the WHL went to a 16team playoff split into two conferences in 2002.

Vancouver started the third period Saturday with two-man power play for 1:47 and the score line reading 4-3 in Kamloops' favour. That opportunity evaporated with Ty Thorpe assessed a checking to the head minor at 1:03 of the third.

The Giants pulled the goalie in favour of an extra attacker with 2:56 remaining. Thorpe took a slashing penalty with 1:41 to go during a skirmish in front of the net.

“The start of the game, I thought it was there for the taking. Kamloops didn't want to grab it after having the win last night,” associate coach Keith McCambridge told play-by-play man Dan O'Connor on the Sportsnet 650 post-game show. “I thought it sat there. We had some opportunities to get ourselves into the game, to continue to push and build off some of the things we liked from last night. But, as we've talked about in the past, discipline problems and having to kill that many penalties ... not being able to capitalize on our power play and some of our key players not being at the level they've been at for the majority of the last couple of weeks here (hampered the chances to win).”

Alex Cotton and Evan Toth gave Vancouver a 2-1 lead going into the second. Kamloops scored three times to go up 4-2 and then Vancouver made it 4-3 when Ethan Semeniuk deposited Jaden Lipinski's rebound past Kamloops goaltender Dylan Garand.

Drew Englot, Connor Levis, Caedan Bankier and Daylan Kuefler tallied for Kamloops. They were 1-of-9 with the man advantage. Garand made 23 saves for Kamloops. Jesper Vikman turned away 35 for Vancouver.

Kamloops winger Luke Toporowski and Vancouver defender Mazden Leslie left Game 1 after being hurt on the same sequence late in the first period and both sat out Game 2.

Toporowskiseemed to suffer a shoulder injury when he crashed into the end boards after getting thwarted by Vancouver netminder Jesper Vikman.

Emmitt Finnie, 16, took Toporowski's spot in the lineup.

Leslie seemed to hurt his ankle on a play around the Vancouver net just before Toporowski's chance.

Vancouver also lost winger Colton Langkow, 18, to an undisclosed injury in the first period. Langkow had missed Game 2 of the Everett series.

Vancouver dressed 11 forwards and seven defencemen on Friday. They went with the more traditional 12-and-six format Saturday, bringing in forward Sammy May, 19, and underage Justin Ivanusec to replace Leslie and Langkow.