You want March Madness with an icy twist? It was all there Saturday night on Blanshard Street.
Defenceman Travis Brown slid up into the offensive zone and took a pass from Steven Hodges to give the Victoria Royals a dramatic 2-1 Western Hockey League overtime playoff victory against the Spokane Chiefs.
The third-seed Royals lead the best-of-seven Western Conference first-round series 1-0 over the sixth-seed Chiefs. Game 2 is today at 5 p.m. at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre before the series swings to Spokane for Games 3 and 4 on Wednesday and Thursday.
“It’s kind of my style [to move up] but I pick my spots,” said Brown.
He sure picked the right one.
“It feels good. But it’s going to be a long series.”
The biggest story in Spokane sports this weekend is March Madness, with the Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena hosting a regional group in the NCAA basketball tournament while the hometown Gonzaga Bulldogs play Arizona today in San Diego for a shot at the Sweet Sixteen.
But the Chiefs were stating their case for a piece of that market share with a gutsy performance Saturday night. The Royals came out aggressive and physical in front of a jacked-up crowd of 6,615 fans at the Memorial Centre. But that is somewhat of a gamble against a team with as high-end a power play as Spokane possess with players such as WHL scoring-champion Mitch Holmberg. The Royals weathered two first-period Taylor Crunk penalties before Ben Walker put home a rebound from Axel Blomqvist for the opening goal of the series at 15:26.
Yet as the power-play imbalance mounted to 5-2 in Spokane’s favour, Victoria was playing with fire. Even if some of the Victoria penalties — in keeping with the hoops references — seemed like touch fouls. It was only the relentlessness of the Royals penalty kill and the stellar goaltending of Patrik Polivka that kept Spokane off the score sheet. The thing about penalty killing is that it exhausts a team, and Victoria began looking fatigued as Spokane appeared to get stronger as the night wore on.
“I don’t think we ran out of gas,” said Royals head coach Dave Lowry.
“They started getting opportunities and pushing pucks into our end.”
After all the crease heroics, it was a soft slider from a bad angle by Spokane’s Riley Whittingham that finally beat Polivka at 2:22 of the third period.
The 20-year-old veteran Eric Williams, appearing in his 25th WHL playoff game, made 31 saves for Spokane.
ICE CHIPS: Buffalo Sabres-prospect Logan Nelson was a scratch Saturday for Victoria . . . Because the NCAA hoops tournament has taken over their arena, the Chiefs would have had to start the playoffs on the road even if they were the higher seed.
