VICTORIA 4 KAMLOOPS 2
Bottle Rocket is a Wes Anderson cult film from the 1990s. The title could also be used to describe Victoria Royals forward Tyler Soy on Friday night. Everybody knew he could only be bottled up for so long before his inner rocket would ignite.
It did with two goals in a 4-2 Royals Western Hockey League victory over the Kamloops Blazers before 3,449 fans at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre. Also scoring his first two goals of the season was Victoria defenceman Chaz Reddekopp, a 2015 draft pick of the Los Angeles Kings, who was also a defensive force in his own end.
Victoria is 3-0, while Kamloops dropped to 0-3.
Soy, expected to be one of the most explosive Victoria snipers, was blanked on opening weekend despite 10 Royals goals in a sweep of the Portland Winterhawks.
“The team did well last weekend but I struggled a bit. So it was nice to bounce back,” said the native of Cloverdale.
Things are unfolding as they should, said Royals head coach Dave Lowry.
“We need different guys to chip in offensively, and Tyler is going to be one of our key contributors,” he noted.
As for Reddekopp’s two goals, Lowry said he doesn’t look at it as necessarily having his defencemen pinching in on offence.
“We want to be an attacking team and also create offence from the back end,” said the Victoria bench boss.
“But it’s not a positional attack. It’s a numbers attack.”
If the WHL pre-season prognosticators are accurate, Victoria and Kamloops will be among the teams battling for the final few playoff slots in the Western Conference next spring. The Royals have a younger team and return only 13 players from last season compared to a veteran Blazers club that returns 18, albeit from a team that missed the playoffs.
“It was a great way to start the weekend,” said Reddekopp.
“We’re using layers, making it hard for the opposition to get to our net.”
The native of West Kelowna opened scoring on the power play at 7:48 of the first period when he moved up to convert a pass from Alex Forsberg.
“It starts with the forwards making great plays,” said Reddekopp, of the offensive chances the Royals blueline has been getting in the early season.
The Kamloops power play returned the favour at 15:11 of the first period through Jake Kryski, who is ranked by Central Scouting for the 2016 NHL draft. In keeping with the power-play theme, Soy snapped home his first goal of the season on an assist from the corner by Matthew Phillips on the odd-man at 6:12 of the second period.
Then Soy, taking a surgical stretch pass from defenceman Joe Hicketts, stayed with his own rebound on a break to put the Royals ahead 3-1 at 17:50 of the second. The Royals closed out scoring with a goal by Reddekopp in the third period while defenceman Nolan Kneen counted for Kamloops with his first WHL goal.
Hicketts finished the night with two assists.
After its torrid start, the Victoria power play cooled to finish 2-6.
“We got casual and didn’t bear down,” said Lowry.
Kamloops went 1-4 on its power plays.
Coleman Vollrath made 26 saves in goal for Victoria. Connor Ingram, who was in the training camp of the Detroit Red Wings, made 25 saves for Kamloops.
The clubs meet again tonight at 7 in the Memorial Centre.