VICTORIA 7
SURREY 2
Joey Visconti picked a good time to come out of his shell on Sunday afternoon, recording a hat-trick and two assists, matching his previous season totals in one afternoon, in pacing the Victoria Grizzlies to a lopsided 7-2 win over the basement-dwelling Surrey Eagles.
Visconti’s five-point outing leaves him with 10 points on the season and, as a team, the Grizzlies matched their longest win streak of the B.C. Hockey League campaign, posting their fifth-straight victory.
“That’s five goals for him since Christmas and he’s a good example of one of our first-year guys getting his feet wet in the first half of the season,” said Grizzlies general manager and head coach Craig Didmon. “The boys are playing hard, especially [Sunday] getting up after a long travel day.”
The team was slated to play in Chilliwack on Saturday, but had the game postponed to a later date due to weather affecting their travel from Prince George. The bus didn’t roll into their Burnaby hotel until 1 a.m. on Sunday.
“It was a long day for the fellas,” said Didmon, who met the team on the Mainland after missing Friday’s 4-2 win in Prince George, due to his teaching commitments. “It was a gutsy effort, despite the circumstances. They stuck to the game plan and good for them.”
Mitchell Barker, Dante Hahn, Tyler Welsh and P.J. Conlon added one goal each as the Grizzlies built up a 5-0 advantage after two periods of play against Surrey. Brett Stewart and Gage Mackie replied for the Eagles, who have had their wings clipped all season long.
Surrey sits just 6-33-0-2 on the season while the Grizzlies improve to 19-20-4-0, creeping closer to the .500 mark for the first time after a slow start.
Kevin Massy finished with three assists, while Alex Peck and Jake Stevens each added a pair of helpers for Victoria, which lost the services of Cody Van Lierop, who took a skate to the chin and went to hospital for stitches.
Mitchel Benson picked up his fourth win of the season in net and second in three nights as he stopped 18 shots for the Grizzlies. Benson had earned the victory on Friday.
“We planned for Mitchel to play Friday and Sunday and we stuck to that,” said Didmon.
The Grizzlies will get back at it on Saturday at home at 7 p.m. against a solid Salmon Arm Silverbacks team that sits 24-11-3-2 in the standings.
“We’ve matched our five-game winning streak and we’ll have a tough one in a massive test against a good team in Salmon Arm,” said Didmon.
The following week, the Grizzlies will be busy playing host to the touring HC Red Bull Salzburg Austrian U-20 team on Jan. 27 before travelling to Nanaimo on Jan. 29 and following that up with back-to-back home dates against Alberni Valley and Nanaimo for a four-games-in-five-days scenario.
