VICTORIA 2 MEDICINE HAT 1
It wasn’t pretty. But it was two points.
The Victoria Royals took a 2-0 lead and then went into a defensive posture and survived with a 2-1 Western Hockey League victory over the Medicine Hat Tigers on Tuesday night before 3,813 fans at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
The small but jet-fast Tigers (26-16-3), who had a two-game winning streak snapped, have a quick counter thrust and just missed the net on several third-period shots that came close to tying the game.
Both goaltenders were fine on the night. Coleman Vollrath made 28 saves for Victoria (31-16-2) to bolster his league-leading goals-against average. Marek Langhammer, a late-round draft pick of the Phoenix Coyotes, made 29 saves for the Tigers.
“We played a good game but didn’t push offensively like we normally do, and we hung on for dear life at the end,” said Vollrath.
“Some people say non-conference games like this are hard to get up for because we don’t really have a rivalry. But we knew we had to bring the same intensity as a conference game.”
>>> GET MORE VICTORIA ROYALS COVERAGE
Victoria had that jump at the start. Brandon Fushimi got the puck just under the crossbar on the power play for Victoria’s first goal at 13:44 of a first period that was controlled by the Royals. Then Brandon Magee banged home the puck, on a play set up by a swooping Axel Blomqvist move to the net, to give the Royals a two-goal advantage at 1:06 of the second period.
The 20-year-old Tigers captain Curtis Valk struck for his 23rd goal and 50th point of the season to bring the Hat to within one on a power play at 5:46 of the second period. Vollrath, however, held the Tigers at bay the rest of the way.
“[Tigers] are a good team of small but tenacious guys and they put a lot of pressure on us,” said Victoria forward Steven Hodges. “But we hung on for the win.”
The Royals are now four games shy of last season’s Royals/Chilliwack Bruins franchise-record 35 wins. But the message remains: Say hungry.
“We had our chances in this game. Then we held on and found a way at the end to win,” said Victoria head coach Dave Lowry.
“But we would like to see some things cleaned up. This is not a built-in rivalry [with Medicine Hat]. You have to make yourself ready to go. It’s a non-conference opponent. It’s a challenge on our leadership group to bring the emotion in.”
Victoria is in Kamloops on Friday night and Vancouver on Saturday.
ICE CHIPS: Bob Ridley, in his 44th year of calling the Tigers radio play-by-play, is the only announcer the Tigers have ever had and goes back to the days when the Tigers played the Victoria Cougars at the old Barn on Blanshard with the likes of Lanny McDonald, Tom Lysiak Stan Weir, Don Murdoch and the Gassoff brothers in tow. Ridley even drove the Tigers team bus for many years.
