GAME DAY: VICTORIA VS. VANCOUVER 7: 30 p.m. at Pacific Coliseum Radio: The Zone 91.3 FM / TV: None
Forward Steven Hodges of the Victoria Royals heads into weekend games in Vancouver tonight and Kamloops on Saturday freshly selected as a member of the Western Hockey League elite.
The third-round 2012 draft pick of the Florida Panthers was the lone Royals player named to the WHL team for its Subway Super Series tilt Nov. 15 at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre against the Russian junior all-stars team that includes 2012 first-overall NHL draft pick Nail Yakupov.
"It's an exciting moment for me and a privilege to be on that [WHL] team," said Hodges.
"I'll do my best to show what I've got."
Only Canadian players are selected for the WHL team and all will be under consideration for the national side to the 2013 world junior championship in Ufa, Russia.
But of more immediate concern are the reeling Giants (2-9) tonight at 7: 30 at the PNE Pacific Coliseum and the league-leading Blazers (12-0-1) Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Interior Savings Centre.
"I have to put the excitement about the Super Series aside and focus on the weekend," said Hodges,
"The reason I'm here is to play for the Victoria Royals."
And that he does well, despite missing eight games earlier this season with a lower-body injury. Hodges has three goals in five games played.
The Royals are 9-4 on the season but have only scored the first goal of the game on four occasions. Six of the nine victories have been rallies from behind. The Royals know a team can only play with that kind of fire for so long.
"We can't keep waiting to fall behind before we wake up and get it going," said Hodges.
"We can't keep doing this [relying on coming from behind]. But if we can play the full 60 minutes, or even a good strong 50 minutes, we can do some damage."
Further complicating the Royals weekend is that tonight's contest in Vancouver has the term "trap game" written all over it if the players are caught thinking ahead to Saturday's big match-up in Kamloops against the league-leading Blazers.
The Royals have won
three consecutive games, and are 3-0 against Vancouver in their season series, while the Giants have lost their last five games. But Royals head coach Dave Lowry doesn't buy trap-game theories.
"We've done a very good job of staying in the present moment," he said.
Yet, Lowry also knows the comeback-kids routine can't last forever.
"We're tempting fate," he said.
"It's a challenge to our top players to do better [for the full 60 minutes]."
This weekend's games are the first two of seven consecutive on the road for the Royals.
"We don't have the luxury of last change," said Lowry.
"We have to be a better team and play smarter, intelligent hockey in other teams' rinks."
ICE CHIPS: Lowry will be an assistant coach for the Super Series game in Victoria and will coach his son, Swift Current Broncos captain Adam Lowry, who was named to play for the WHL team . . . The Royals received a life lesson with a trip last week to the East End of Vancouver, arranged by the Victoria police department. The Royals will relate what they learned in later classroom talks aimed at young Island students. Hodges said the message from the Vancouver East Enders to the players was plain and pointed: "They were willing to talk and told us to stay on the right track and away from that stuff [drugs]." . . .
Newly acquired Kale Kessy will make his Giants' debut tonight. The 6-foot-3 winger has finished serving his 12-game suspension received for a hit-to-the-head when he was a member of the Medicine Hat Tigers. Kessy, who will turn 20 in December, was a fourth-round pick of the Phoenix Coyotes in the 2011 NHL draft.
