Former NFL coach Bill Parcells once said: “You are what your record says you are.”
The Victoria Royals’ record of 3-17-2 in the just-completed pandemic-abbreviated Western Hockey League season says they were historically bad with among the worst winning percentages in WHL and Canadian Hockey League history.
Pro-rated to 66 games (there are 68 in a normal WHL season), the Royals would have been 9-51-6. That’s barely above the 1989-90 Victoria Cougars (5-65-2), whose CHL record for futility was broken by the 1995-96 London Knights (3-60-3) of the OHL. The Cougars continued stumbling until they left town for Prince George.
But if it’s any consolation for the Royals, the Knights rebounded to become one of the greatest franchises in junior hockey.
Regardless, Royals GM and head coach Dan Price would like to put an asterisk beside Parcells’ quote. He might also mention, in keeping with an NFL theme, that the Dallas Cowboys were 1-15 in 1989 before winning three Super Bowls from 1993 to 1996.
The Royals were the WHL bottom-dwellers but Victoria was also the youngest team in the league with an average age of 17.64 years.
“It’s unheard of for a roster this young to compete the way we did. The effort was tremendous,” said Price.
“If we didn’t have key injuries to older players, our record would have been better.”
It’s not just excuse-spinning. Price has a point. Forward Riley Gannon and defenceman Noah Lamb suffered season-ending injuries and other key veterans were also lost for significant portions of time. Veteran WHL and hometown Victoria blueliners Nolan Bentham and Jacson Alexander didn’t even make the trip to Kelowna and Kamloops for the truncated season. Both are expected back in the fall.
“Our younger players were forced to carry so much of the load,” said Price.
“They had to play so many more minutes than expected.”
Price said that ordeal by fire will hold the 12 rookies in good stead.
“We are very excited about the next three to four years with this group,” he said.
The other part of the story is that they even got this opportunity. The WHL moved heaven and earth to conduct a season of some sort.
“You really sense the gratitude from the players,” said Price.
“It was very meaningful for them – for the graduating players to get a final season of junior and for the younger players to get important development time in real-game situations. The [Kelowna] Rockets were tremendous hub hosts.”
As they cleared their dressing room in the Okanagan on Thursday, and departed back to their hometowns, no Royal had farther to travel than Keanu Derungs. He flew from Kelowna to Vancouver to Frankfurt to Zurich. The forward came out in December to play for Switzerland in the 2021 world junior championship in Edmonton and then dovetailed into the
WHL season with the Royals.
“It was worth it,” he said, of his journey encompassing club and country.
“It’s always an honour to represent your nation at a world championship. In club with the Royals, it was a tough season for us but we got better and improved over the course of it and these young guys are going to do a lot of good things in the years ahead.”
One thing is for sure, it is a season no player will forget.
“It was tough being in a bubble for so long but we handled the unusual situation well,” said Derungs, who will return to Victoria next season as a19-year-old.
ICE CHIPS: Brayden Tracey, a seamless-skating NHL first-round draft pick of the Anaheim Ducks, led Victoria with 21 points on nine goals and 12 assists. Whether the Ducks will return Tracey to junior with the Royals as a 20-year-old will be one of the biggest off-season questions.
cdheensaw@timescolonist.com
