Some losses can be so crushing as to be debilitating. They aren’t just deflating, they are cratering.
The defending Western Hockey League regular-season champion Victoria Royals aren’t the first team to have to dust off after a demoralizing defeat. Theirs occurred last spring in Game 7 of the second-round playoff series against the Kelowna Rockets when imminent victory, and playoff advancement, was snatched away with just a millisecond remaining in one of the most whiplash reversals of fortune in WHL history.
Royals head coach Dave Lowry described it as “our Bill Buckner moment.”
Yet he can take heart. The Boston Red Sox eventually overcame the wrenching blow of the Buckner debacle to win three World Series since.
On the eve of a new WHL season — the Royals open the 2016-17 campaign Friday night against the Prince George Cougars at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre — the team believes their mantra of “sustained excellence” wasn’t altered by that bewildering and emotionally draining loss last spring.
This is an organization with the stated goal of wanting to be competitive every season, and it says that isn’t changed by one playoff collapse.
“We don’t think about it,” said Lowry. “That’s hockey. We move forward.”
Royals general manager Cam Hope concurred.
“We’ve put it in the rear-view mirror,” he said. “If anything, we will use it as a learning and building block … as a lesson. But everyone in this organization is looking forward.”
Which is what the Royals have done well since the team moved to the Island in 2011-12. As the Chilliwack Bruins, for five seasons from 2006-07 to 2010-11, the franchise was mediocre at best and finished no better than third place in the B.C. Division and failed to make it out of the first round of the playoffs.
The first two seasons in Victoria followed that same pattern, the second of which was the first year under the current regime of Hope and Lowry. Then came the breakout campaign of 2013-14, when the Royals set franchise records for wins (48) and points (100) while winning the first playoff series in franchise history.
That was followed by another second-place finish in the B.C. Division and another playoff series victory in 2014-15. That was thought to be the pinnacle for a veteran team.
What happened next defied all norms, as the Royals, in what was thought to be a rebuilding season, shocked the junior-hockey establishment by winning the 2015-16 WHL regular-season championship with franchise records for wins (50) and points (106).
That wasn’t supposed to happen. The usual pattern in major-junior hockey is a team builds up with younger players for two or three seasons, reaches a crescendo in the third or fourth season, and then the process begins anew. But some organizations defy that trend.
“There are teams in the WHL that are good every year, and we try to take lessons from that,” said Hope, alluding to franchises such as the Kelowna Rockets.
“In order to achieve that model of sustained excellence, you have to stay ahead of everything and you have to get your coaching, staffing and scouting right. This is a frenetic business, and a lot can go wrong. But you try to stay ahead of the curve. Ownership here [Graham Lee] has given us the resources to reach the gold standard of how organizations should operate in junior hockey.”
A key is that the Royals have always managed to make room for 16- or 17-year-old rookies, who are ready to bloom at 18 and 19. This season’s case in point will be 16-year-old forward Eric Florchuk.
“We create a good list [of young prospects] through good scouting, and then we manage that list,” said Lowry.
And Victoria has been adept at taking other teams’ castoffs and plugging them successfully into the Royals system as reclamation projects. The Vancouver Giants had given up on forward Vladimir Bobylev and the Portland Winterhawks on forward Ethan Price. But Hope saw glimmers of potential and scooped up both for next to nothing; both contributed to last season’s run to the league regular-season championship. So much so that Bobylev was signed to a pro KHL contract over the summer by Moscow Spartak in his native Russia.
“We believe in second chances,” said Lowry.
“It is up to the players to take advantage of those opportunities.”
Lowry also pointed to the unusual number of Royals who were drafted by NHL teams after being bypassed in their initial year of eligibility — Tyler Soy, Jack Walker and Bobylev. Also, last season’s captain, Joe Hicketts, was famously overlooked in the NHL draft and was subsequently signed as a free-agent prospect of the Detroit Red Wings.
Second chances, indeed.
The latest is Royals defenceman Ralph Jarratt, who has been invited to the camp of the New Jersey Devils, despite not being selected in the NHL draft.
Meanwhile, riffing off the success of Bobylev and the returning Price, this season’s veteran plug-ins have been obtained in trades for future bantam draft picks. They are forwards Blake Barger from the Moose Jaw Warriors and Carter Folk from the Lethbridge Hurricanes.
None of this is happenstance. Nobody scouts better than the Royals, and they have a book on everybody.
“We are careful both about the types of players we draft in bantam, and also the types of players we bring in here as pickups or by trade,” said Hope. “For instance, we have been tracking Blake Barger since he was playing [youth hockey] in California.”
That sort of commitment to detail doesn’t go unnoticed.
Folk admitted no player likes to be traded, but the consolation for him was that he was coming to Victoria.
“[Players talk in this league] and I heard nothing but good things about the Royals organization, the coaches and the city,” said the 20-year-old, who was obtained last week from Lethbridge.
“It’s a good organization to which to be traded. It starts with the culture in the dressing room here. You can feel it.”
That level of thoroughness runs throughout the roster. No team gets more out of lower-end players than the Royals, enabling Lowry to open the door and rotate through four lines and three sets of defencemen without losing much quality from top to bottom.
The role players on this team — such as Jared Dmytriw, Ryan Peckford and Regan Nagy — contribute as much in their own way as the Royals’ NHL draft picks Soy, Walker, Matthew Phillips and Chaz Reddekopp.
It is certainly why Lowry has twice been named WHL coach of the year in his four seasons on the Victoria bench. Using an analogy from another sport, that’s batting .500, and that’s not easy to do. This guy can coach, and is the single greatest asset in the Royals organization, and why he will be back on a pro bench at some point in the future.
Maybe this reliance on balance and depth, and not an individual star, is why the Royals have yet to produce an NHL player during their five seasons to date in Victoria — although there is great hope for Hicketts.
Top Royals alumni such as Ben Walker, Logan Nelson, Brandon Magee and Steven Hodges have so far toiled in the minor-pro ECHL, Austin Carroll in the AHL. Others, such as last season’s 20-year-old graduates Coleman Vollrath, Logan Fisher and Alex Forsberg, have gone on to the Canadian university CIS.
There are three points of the major-junior hockey compass every franchise aspires to reach. One and two involve having connections to the Memorial Cup and world junior championship, and the other is producing a No. 1 NHL draft pick.
Regarding the former, the Royals were .02 seconds away from advancing deep into the 2016 Memorial Cup quest and look well poised to at least be in the conversation for the next few years. The Royals are also keen to host a future Memorial Cup.
Hicketts, meanwhile, has competed in the last two world junior championships for Canada, and Lowry has been both head coach and assistant coach of Canada, to give Royals fans ample home-team rooting interest in the world juniors. Victoria also is bidding to host, along with Vancouver, the 2019 world junior tournament.
The only thing missing on the Royals’ resumé from the Big Triple of major-junior is having produced that once-in-a-generation player that all NHL teams covet and who creates that Connor McDavid-like buzz in the building every time he steps on to the ice. Never mind McDavid, the Royals haven’t been close to producing even a top-three NHL draft pick such as Leon Draisaitl.
Despite the lack of even any Royals-produced NHLer to date, Lowry does not apologize for propagating the dream, even though it is largely a myth. Most WHL players end up in the CIS, minor pro AHL/ECHL, Europe or washed out of hockey entirely.
“Players in the WHL all want to make the NHL,” noted Lowry, himself a 19-season NHL veteran.
“Why spoil that?”
Even if the vast majority of WHLers will fall short of that goal, they know what they are getting into.
Despite being 20 and undrafted, with no pro offers yet, five-season Royals defenceman Ryan Gagnon said he has no regrets about the path he chose.
“I’ve definitely learned a lot the past five years,” said Gagnon.
“I am still hoping to get a pro tryout next year. If not, I will go to play in the CIS.”
Gagnon is part of the Royals’ first bantam draft class selected in 2011, after the team moved to Victoria, and so is part of the first Royals generation with no connection to Chilliwack.
“I’ve worked as hard as I could,” he said. “It has definitely really surprised me how we have gone from a big team with a rougher style to a team that plays more of a speed and skill game.”
That has been crafted by design the past four years by Hope, Lowry and the Royals’ well-regarded scouting staff.
Among those swifter and more skilled players is Florchuk.
Gagnon, too, was once a 16-year-old Royals rookie. Asked if he had any advice for Florchuk, the veteran Gagnon responded: “It will fly by, so don’t take it for granted.”
With his junior days dwindling to a precious few, Gagnon knows last season’s stunning playoff collapse was an opportunity lost.
“It will always kind of haunt you,” said Gagnon.
“But it’s a part of hockey and life in general. And in hockey and life, you move on … you keep moving forward.”
That could stand as the Royals’ mantra for 2016-17.
VICTORIA REGULAR-SEASON WHL CHAMPIONS
(Scotty Munro Trophy winners)
VICTORIA ROYALS 2015-16
Record: 50-16-6 for 106 points.
Playoffs result: Lost in second round to Kelowna Rockets.
Notable players: Joe Hicketts, Matthew Phillips, Tyler Soy, Logan Fisher, Dante Hannoun, Jack Walker.
Record following season: To be determined.
VICTORIA COUGARS 1980-81
Record: 60-11-1 for 121 points.
Playoffs result: Won WHL championship. Placed third in Memorial Cup.
Notable players: Barry Pederson, Grant Fuhr, Mark Morrison, Brad Palmer, Torrie Robertson, Rich Chernomaz.
Record following season: 43-28-1 for 87 points (second in West).
VICTORIA COUGARS 1974-75
Record: 47-18-5 for 99 points.
Playoffs result: Lost in second round (league semifinals) to New Westminster Bruins.
Notable players: Mel Bridgman, Rick Lapointe, Al Hill, Kim Clackson, Gordie Roberts.
Record following season: 37-28-7 for 81 points (fourth in West).
