NEAL’S NOTES: ROYALS’ LEAD CUT IN HALF
Three one goal games and all won by the home side so far in the Western Conference Semi-Final between the Victoria Royals and Kelowna Rockets. The Rockets recorded their first lead and eventual win of the best-of-7 with a 3-2 victory to cut the Royals’ lead to 2-games-to-1.
Two players who need to make an impact for the Rockets did so Tuesday. Rourke Chartier scored his first goal of the season against the Royals Tuesday, and his first in five games. Dillon Dube who opened scoring recorded his first tally since Game 1 of the Rockets’ first round series with Kamloops. Tomas Soustal notched his fourth goal of the playoffs mid-way through the third period and it stood up as the winner.
Matt Phillips and Alex Forsberg scored for the Royals, the latter coming with 68 seconds left in regulation time.
Goaltending has been a big story for all the right reasons in this series. Michael Herringer, who the Royals’ drafted in the ninth round in 2011, was rightfully the first star of the game on the Shaw broadcast with 30 saves on 32 shots. He made two breakaway saves off Jack Walker in the second period. In the first, Herringer made a marvelous stop that the Rockets were able to parlay into a rush the other way that led to Chartier’s goal late in the period.
Coleman Vollrath was busy again with 35 saves in a losing cause. Vollrath was solid keeping the Royals in the game, like Herringer, with timely stops. If anyone was wondering about goaltending in this series, both have answered the bell and thus the close games in the series.
A big point in the contest came in the third period when the Royals had a 46 second 5-on-3 man advantage, with the game still 2-1 Rockets. The Royals could not capitalize and a big reason for that was the fact the Rockets won four straight defensive zone face-offs. In the game, the Rockets were the better team on draws, winning 59% to the Royals’ 41%.
Hicketts’ return was a solid one and he got better and better as the game went along, playing around the 30 minute mark. Hicketts made a fantastic play on Forsberg’s goal in the third, stopping a clearing attempt going down on his knees, quickly bouncing up and with pressure coming at him, fired a perfect rink-wide pass to Forsberg who released in a hurry and beat Herringer. For the fourth game in a row the Royals played without forward Alex Bobylev.
Game 4 is Thursday in Kelowna and now we know we’re headed back to Victoria for Game 5 Friday. The Rockets will look to ensure we hit the Okanagan again for Game 6 Sunday with another win.
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Central Scouting’s final rankings came out and three Victoria Royals have made their way on the list. Forward Matt Phillips, who was unranked in the mid-term report, is the highest of any player that did not make that list. Phillips is 81st among North American skaters. Tyler Soy is ranked 150th and Vladimir Bobylev gets on at 203rd. Ty Westgard was not on the final rankings, although he was ranked 176th in the mid-term report. Bit of a surprise that Jack Walker didn’t get mentioned with the terrific second half of the season that he and his line-mates had. No doubt a team will give him a shot, whether drafted or a free agent invite in the summer.
54 WHL players were ranked with Jake Bean the highest again, dropping two spots to 15th. Tough news for Bean, who suffered a broken foot and will not be able to play for Canada at the World Under-18 Championship in Grand Forks, North Dakota. That tournament starts Thursday.
Brett Howden is now ranked the second-highest prospect from the WHL, jumping up five spots to 22. Meanwhile, Howden’s Warriors’ teammate and former Royals’ draft pick Noah Gregor had a big jump, going from 75 to 45. Funny that Shaw had the first round series between the Warriors and Raiders and the Moose Jaw players rose, while the Raiders’ dropped. Simon Stransky fell from 25 to 48 and defenceman Vojtech Budik dropped from 61 to 90. Another player that made a sizeable jump was Hudson Elyniuk of the Spokane Chiefs, who went from 122 in the mid-term rankings to 68.
Speaking of vaulting up the rankings, Pierre-Luc Dubois of Cape Breton went from 7th to the top ranked skater in the final rankings, overtaking London’s Matt Tkachuk, who is ranked 2nd.
Carter Hart of the Everett Silvertips is second ranked among North American goalies. He was top-ranked in the mid-term rankings, but that spot is now taken over by Evan Fitzpatrick of Sherbrooke in the QMJHL. Zach Sawchenko went from 3 to 6, while Kamloops’ goalie Connor Ingram went from 12 to 8. Again, no mention of Royals’ goalie Griffin Outhouse, although maybe not enough viewings for him. But he should be on there.
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Mark Holick is out as Head Coach of the Prince George Cougars. In a release, the team announced it was a mutually agreed upon decision to go in a different direction behind the bench. Holick’s record in Prince George was 101-119-8-12 and the team really seemed to be a tough group to deal with when they were right with Victoria for second spot in January. But they went 5-15-1-1 in their final 22 games and were ousted by Seattle in the first round in four straight.
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Seattle and Everett get to it again Wednesday in game 3, with the series knotted at one win each. It was the only series of the four in the second round that were split through two games. Members of the Silvertips hockey ops staff, including General Manager Garry Davidson, were in Kelowna Tuesday to take in Game 3 of the Royals and Rockets.
The Brandon Wheat Kings seemed in full control of their series with Moose Jaw until the Warriors blew up the reigning East Champs with a 7-1 victory in Game 3. Jayden Halbgewachs had three goals and five points in the win and Tanner Jeannot had a goal and three assists for the Warriors.
In Regina, the Pats picked up their first win of the series with Red Deer with three unanswered goals in a 6-3 victory in Game 3. Impressive crowd of 6200+ at the game, and the home side has won each game of that series too. Home teams are 10-1 in round two of the four series. Adam Brooks, Sam Steel and Cole Sanford have all had a point in all eight Pats’ playoff games.
