Game, set, match, series.
The Victoria Royals’ WHL season ended Wednesday night. But for the first time since 2019, it was in the playoffs.
The positive assessment is to consider it a first step toward the light after several seasons in the darkness brought on by an unholy combination of the pandemic and just plain not being good enough to make the post-season.
The Royals are now good enough to skate in the playoffs. But certainly not, this year at least, to make an impact once there, as the players formed a circle on the ice at the end of the game to wave good-bye and thank-you to the 3,067 fans at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre, many of whom stayed to give a standing ovation after the 4-1 loss.
The Western Conference second-ranked Portland Winterhawks — ranked No. 5 in the CHL national top-10 poll with seven NHL drafted or signed players and three ranked for the 2024 NHL draft — are simply on another level. It is a standard at which seventh-seed Victoria was not able to compete in a 4-0 first-round playoff sweep by the Winterhawks.
The question now is can the Royals take another step next season toward the goal of not only being a playoff team, but a more successful one, with a team returning most of its roster?
That is the nature of major-junior hockey. The Winterhawks, a rare study in consistency in the cyclical WHL, have not missed the playoffs since 2009-10 in the years that playoffs have been held. But this current 19-year-old heavy Portland roster cannot return intact in a league that allows only three 20-year-olds.
Those are questions for September. This April night was about the eighth end-of-series playoff handshake in the rivalry between Victoria and Portland in the junior WHL, twice since 2014 between the Royals and Winterhawks, with the other six between the Cougars and Winterhawks in a period of match-ups from 1978 to 1983.
The Winterhawks knew they were in a series. Two of the four games were one-goal affairs. But good teams win tight games and Portland is a very good team. And is now headed to the second round with its lethally quick and devastating transition attack.
Victoria’s defensive zone-coverage was again a shambles. How do you leave the same guy wide open twice on the left post? Josh Zakreski was probably wondering that himself as he tapped home twice to open scoring for Portland before the game was eight minutes old. Rookie Cole Reschny, a big part of Victoria’s future, brought the Royals to within one on the power play at 17:02 of a first period in which Victoria was outshot 19-7.
Josh Davies restored Portland’s two-goal advantage at 16:35 of the middle period. At that point the Royals were hoping against hope with the shot counter showing a 30-9 advantage for the ’Hawks and graduating 20-year-old Victoria goalkeeper Braden Holt kept busy in this final game of junior hockey. Kyle Chyzowski’s goal at 2:32 of the third period pretty much decided it.
