The Victoria Royals don’t get too many chances to make national headlines in junior hockey. But they certainly would tonight at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre if they managed an upset victory over the Canadian Hockey League top-ranked Winnipeg Ice. These are the games you dream about playing in and that isn’t lost on the Royals.
“It’s a very exciting opportunity. If you are a competitive person, these are the real tests you want and crave to see how you stack up,” said Victoria GM and head coach Dan Price.
The Ice (7-1) boast three NHL first-round draft picks in forwards Matthew Savoie (ninth overall to the Buffalo Sabres in 2022), Conor Geekie (11th overall to the Arizona Coyotes in 2022) and defenceman Carson Lambos (26th overall to the Minnesota Wild in 2021). If that isn’t enough, Ice forward Zach Benson from Chilliwack is projected as a first-round top-10 overall selection for the 2023 NHL draft.
“The Ice have a very vertical attack,” said Price.
“They fly out of the zone from all over. To use a football analogy, they have a lot of deep threats.”
Geekie has five goals and seven points in seven games and Savoie two goals and six points in four games since returning from Sabres camp after reaching 90 points last season. Savoie is a lock and Geekie, also eligible for 2024, a strong possible for the Canadian team for the 2023 world junior championship tournament in Halifax and Moncton. Benson comes in with four goals and 10 points in eight games after scoring 25 goals with 63 points in 58 games last season.
Even blue-liner Lambos, a gold medallist with Canada in the 2022 world junior championship and a likely first-pairing rearguard for the 2023 Canadian team, is an offensive threat with 10 goals and 47 points in 51 regular-season games last year and four assists in four games this season since returning from Wild training camp.
What do you do against a team with this sort of talent? Keep the puck away from them.
“We need to possess the puck as much as possible,” said Price.
That will be easier said than done as the Ice pose the biggest threat to the Royals’ mini-resurgence. Victoria began the Western Hockey League season with seven consecutive losses but has won two consecutive games and is unbeaten in regulation time in three.
“You can’t panic. You have to commit to the process,” said Price.
The Royals are turning things around despite a serious injury situation, not so much in terms of quantity, but quality. Top-pairing defenceman Wyatt Wilson, who was in the NHL rookie camp of the Winnipeg Jets, is out for several months with a lower-body injury incurred last week. Forward and Canada U-18 player Brayden Schuurman was hurt in the NHL rookie camp of the Boston Bruins and Victoria captain Gannon Laroque, signed to an NHL entry-level contract by the San Jose Sharks and under consideration for the Canadian team to the 2023 world juniors, is also out with injury. Both have yet to play this season. Schuurman is week-to-week and Laroque month-to-month.
Victoria rallied from a 3-0 deficit to defeat the Brandon Wheat Kings 5-3 in their previous outing Saturday night on Blanshard. It was the Royals’ first game against an Eastern Conference team since the pandemic restricted the WHL schedule. Tonight, against the Ice, will be the second and features the teams that bookend the furthest points West and East in the WHL.
“It’s really refreshing and our guys [looked] forward to the re-integration and seeing perhaps a different style of play that they have not seen for awhile,” said Price.
ICE CHIPS: They could have been the nationally top-ranked Nanaimo Ice and this might have been an Island derby game. The Kootenay Ice were strongly thought to be potentially heading to the Harbour City, pending a new rink in Nanaimo, but the 2017 arena referendum failed. The Ice instead moved from Cranbrook to Winnipeg in 2019-20. But as the third-ranked team in the market, behind the NHL Jets and AHL Moose, the Ice averaged a WHL second-lowest attendance of 1,583 last season despite its high-octane roster that won the regular-season championship with a 53-10-5 record. The Ice, however, play in the 1,600-seat University of Manitoba arena and will be moving to a new 4,500-seat rink in Oak Bluff next season — ironically, just in time for the roster rebuild in the cycle of junior hockey.
cdheensaw@timescolonist.com
