TRI-CITY 5
VICTORIA 1
If head coach Dave Lowry didn’t like the effort in Friday’s third period of a 4-2 win over the Tri-City Americans, then he had a definite disdain for the 60 minutes that followed in Saturday’s 5-1 loss to the visitors at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
Add the fact that his Victoria Royals are 1-6-1 in the second end of back-to-back games and that’s enough to send him into a deeper funk.
“That’s alarming, yeah it is, and that’s something we just talked about. We’re going to have to find a way to rectify that,” said Lowry, not mincing words as his charges were worn down by a big, physical Americans club.
“We’ve always talked — the second game, and especially at home when you have the same opponent, is hard to win. That’s part and parcel with something we have to deal with every year. For us, it’s maturing as a group, preparation and urgency the second night.”
The Royals were outshot 20-6 in the third period on Friday.
“If you carry over those through the first [on Saturday] we were outshot 30-13. That’s probably not the way we want to play and it tells you we’re spending too much time in our own zone,” Lowry said.
Parker AuCoin, on a deflection at 8:43 of the second period, gave the Americans a 2-1 lead and Vladislav Lukin upped it to 3-1 3:03 later, finishing off a 2-on-1 with Michael Rasmussen.
The goals came on Victoria starting netminder Dylan Myskiw as both teams went to different netminders on Saturday, the Americans countering with Evan Sarthou.
Morgan Geekie wired one past Myskiw on a power play to open the scoring for the Americans at 14:40 of the first period, seconds after Lukin had hit the crossbar.
In his 93rd game, Matthew Phillips became the fastest player in Royals’ history and second fastest in franchise history (including Chilliwack) to reach 50 goals when he tied the game at 1-1 on a 5-on-3 at 19:22 of the first. Oscar Moller got there in 86 games with his time with the Chilliwack Bruins.
With the goal, Phillips also became the 18th player in franchise history to reach 100 points and fourth fastest to do so behind Mark Santorelli (84 games), Moller (87) and Phillips’ former teammate Alex Forsberg (92).
It was all the announced crowd of 4,251 had to cheer about on this night, however.
Rasmussen collected his league-high 17th goal of the season on a defensive miscue at 4:18 of the third and Kurtis Rutledge added a power-play goal with 15 seconds remaining in the game.
