This is not the direction in which any team wants to be heading into the playoffs. The Victoria Royals began this calendar year 10 games above .500 in January. They concluded their 2023-24 Western Hockey League regular season Friday night one game below .500 at 29-30-9 after having won just twice in their last 12 games and only six times since New Year’s Day.
About the only redeeming caveat from the spiral is that it was accelerated by a horrendous run of injuries and the Victoria roster is now approaching whole heading into a post-season in which the Western Conference seventh-place Royals will play either the conference 1-2 Prince George Cougars or Portland Winterhawks — likely Portland — in the first round, beginning next Friday on the road.
Also on the upside of the ledger is that, despite the season’s second-half swoon, the Royals banked enough points in the first half to make their first post-season appearance in five years following the pandemic cancellations of the 2020 and 2021 playoffs and Victoria failing to qualify for the last two post-seasons in 2022 and 2023.
The Royals brought the curtain down on their regular season with a 4-2 loss to the visiting Wenatchee Wild on Friday night before 5,163 fans at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
It was a strange against-the-grain kind of victory for the Wild, as the Royals pressed and outshot Wenatchee 37-25, but to little avail.
It was the final career junior-hockey regular-season games for graduating Royals 20-year-olds Dawson Pasternak, who finished with a team-leading 72 points including with 27 goals, Tyson Laventure, who had a combined 31 goals and 67 points this season with Victoria and Swift Current, and goaltender Braden Holt, who made his 12th start over Victoria’s past 14 games to clearly indicate the Royals will ride the WHL veteran into the post-season.
The Wild (34-29-4), meanwhile, clinched fourth place in the Western Conference and home-ice advantage for the first round of the playoffs. They have accomplished that despite no longer having three NHL first-round draft picks — Matthew Savoie, Conor Geekie, Zach Benson — from last season’s WHL regular-season championship and league playoff finals squad (when the franchise was known as the Winnipeg Ice, and coached by current Royals head coach James Patrick, before the off-season move to central Washington state).
Logan Pickford and Reggie Newman scored for Victoria on Friday night while Karter Prosofsky recorded the hat-trick for Wenatchee.
The game highlighted some recent issues that need to be resolved heading into the playoffs for Victoria as the disjointed Royals power play went 1-6 and Wenatchee won the face-off battle.
Wenatchee won the season series 3-1. The Wild/Ice franchise is 11-7-2 all-time against the Royals.
ICE CHIPS: Pasternak was named the Royals’ season MVP in a ceremony following the game.
