That said, you would rather be the Victoria Royals than the Vancouver Giants heading into 2017-18 Western Hockey League season, which begins tonight for the two clubs when they meet at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
“We are going to play aggressive, smart and fast hockey,” said returning Royals defenceman Ralph Jarratt, about a veteran-laden Victoria team, that has legitimate hopes of challenging the Kelowna Rockets this season in the B.C. Division.
“We are good at staying calm and keeping it simple.”
One of the mantras of the Royals’ off-season, in the transition from former head coach Dave Lowry to new man Dan Price, is that there is such a thing as “Royals hockey” and it goes on regardless of who is on the bench.
“I love our core. I think we have good balance with all different kinds of ages, sizes and styles,” said Price, the former Royals assistant coach, who takes over the main job from Lowry, who departed to become assistant coach in the NHL with the Los Angeles Kings, after five seasons in Victoria as bench boss.
Price appears to have buy-in to his balanced approach, with continuity counting for a lot, as the Royals stayed in-house to elevate him rather than look outside the organization to replace Lowry.
“Anybody on our roster can score,” said returning 19-year-old forward Dante Hannoun, who is expected to be doing his share of it this season.
“Anybody can play with anybody on our forward lines. We play a team game and it doesn’t matter who scores. If everybody plays their role, we are going to be fine. We take pride in everybody keeping their feet moving and being hard to play against, especially in transition.”
The Giants, meanwhile, missed the playoffs for the third consecutive season in 2016-17 and fourth time in the past five seasons. The Giants went into full-on rebuild mode last season. The fruit from that decision will ripen over the next few years. The Giants are still a season or two away in their achingly slow bid to return to relevance after the glory days of the 2007 Memorial Cup, which must seem like they happened on another planet.
Not that these Giants aren’t dangerous in spots. Forwards Ty Ronning and Brad Morrison have been returned from the NHL training camps of the New York Rangers and Calgary Flames, respectively. Edmonton Oilers-prospect Tyler Benson, whose last two seasons have pretty much been write-offs due to injuries, again starts the season on the injury list. But when that first unit becomes whole, the Benson-Ronning-Morrison line has the potential to be the best in the league.
“You always try to eliminate the threat posed by the top players of the other team and play hard against them,” said Jarratt.
“We have to finish our hits.”
Vancouver’s top line is no big deal to new Royals defenceman Anthony Bishop, who noted that last season, he faced the WHL’s top unit of Mathew Barzal, Ryan Gropp and Keegan Kolesar every day in practice as a member of the defending league-champion Seattle Thunderbirds.
“[Players like that] you have to keep in front of you, watch their chest, and pinch them off,” said Bishop.
The Giants’ defence, meanwhile, must contend with returning 50-goal scorer Matthew Phillips of the Royals.
“I’m a lot more confident this year and I’m excited for [tonight] and I’m ready to go,” said the Flames prospect, who returned from Calgary’s NHL camp earlier this week.
The 19-year-old Phillips said he is not focusing specifically on surpassing his 50 goals from last season, although there are mounting expectations for him to do just that.
“I don’t worry too much about getting a specific number of goals,” he said.
“If you’re not focused on a specific number, it works out better than [obsessing] about that number.”
The same with his quest to make the Canadian team for the 2018 world junior championship this winter in Buffalo, New York, after showing well in the summer selection camp: “It’s similar to the number of points stuff. I just worry about playing my game for the Royals and not about impressing Hockey Canada.”
The Royals and Giants meet each other more than any other teams. Although the Giants’ recent low era has considerably muted what was supposed to be the Royals’ greatest rivalry, it has had its benefits as a soft source of 20 potential points in recent seasons for the Royals, who went 8-1-1 against Vancouver last season.
The second of their 10 meetings this season is Saturday night at the Langley Events Centre.
ICE CHIPS: Royals 20-year-old forward Tyler Soy remains in the camp of the Anaheim Ducks, despite being unsigned by the NHL club, and will miss tonight’s game . . . Six-foot-three Dylan Coghlan from Nanaimo, an undrafted 19-year-old defenceman with the Tri-City Americans of the WHL, has impressed enough as a free-agent invitee in Golden Knights camp to sign a three-year NHL entry-level contract with Las Vegas.
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