Town Toyota Centre, the home of the Wild in Wenatchee has been wrecking yard for visiting B.C. Hockey League teams.
The Wild have developed a ruthless habit of hanging losses on their visitors.
Wenatchee is a perfect 8-0 at home in this year's playoffs and an astounding 56-6-3-0 in home games (playoffs and regular season) the past two seasons.
No other BCHL team comes close, and that includes the Prince George Spruce Kings, the Wild's opponents in the Fred Page Cup championship series which starts tonight south of the border in Wenatchee, Wash.
The Wild went through the entire 2016-17 without a regulation loss at home, finishing with a 27-0-2-0 record, and they weren't far off that again this year, going 24-4-1-0 on home ice. All those wins has made the Wild popular with their fans. Home attendance averaged 2,767, second only to Penticton league-leading 3,052 average.
Wild head coach and general manager Bliss Littler says he doesn't know why the only American team in the 17-team BCHL plays so well on U.S. soil but he's hoping that magic will continue over the next week or so as they try to rein in their first title.
"I really think a lot of teams come in here and try to be super-physical and I think what happens is we have a little more juice playing at home and when you're physical and you try to finish every check, a lot of times you get out of position and it seems we take advantage of a lot of mistakes," said Littler, USA Hockey's winningest Tier 1 and Tier 2 junior coach, now in his sixth season behind the Wild bench.
"Obviously we're going to be going into a building where the other team has a great home record this year so it should be interesting. It's good to have some fresh faces (in the final). Penticton and Vernon have been there so much and it's good when it gets spread around a bit and I'm guessing a run like this is going to help the fan base in P.G."
The Wild and Spruce Kings have never made it this far into the BCHL playoffs. That dates back 22 seasons for the Spruce Kings, who joined the league in 1996, the season after they won the Citizen Cup as Rocky Mountain Junior Hockey League champs. This is only the third BCHL season for the Wild, who have never won a championship dating back to 2008 when they joined the North American Hockey League.
"Just the character in this room from the start of playoffs, you knew something special was going to happen, we worked so hard, especially with Adam (head coach Maglio) and the way we've done things around here it's no real surprise we made it," said Kings winger Ethan de Jong.
"I remember reading something at the beginning of the year and it was supposed to be an off-year for us - next year was supposed to be the year we made it far - which is kind of funny, how well we're doing, and we have to keep it going. Wenatchee's a good team but I feel we're just as good and it's going to be a good series."
The teams met just twice in the regular season and each team won their games at home. The Spruce Kings dropped a 3-2 decision in Wenatchee Nov. 11 in the middle of three-game, 2,400-kilometre weekend roadtrip. The Kings returned the favour on Dec. 9, beating the Wild 4-3 despite getting outshot 38-19.
The Wild have plenty of firepower with five of the league's top-10 playoff point producers. That starts Jasper Weatherby, the BCHL scoring champion, who collected 37 goals and 37 assists for 74 points in 58 regular season games. The 20-year-old from Lummi Island, Wash., has been unstoppable in the postseason, averaging two points a night with 13 goals and 17 assists in 15 playoff games. He had two goals and two assists in the 6-1 win last Friday which ended the Trail Smoke Eaters' season. Weatherby's usual accomplice, AJ Vanderbeck, put up 37 goals and 62 points in 49 regular season games and has nine playoff points in 10 games.
It doesn't stop there. Sam Morton has been deadly in the playoffs with 22 points in 15 games. Defenceman Cooper Zech is a handful to contain, already with four goals and 19 playoff points, while Florida product Lucas Sowder has seven goals and 18 points in the postseason, after generating 60 points in just 49 regular season games.
Wenatchee scored more regular season goals (241) than any BCHL team, an average 4.15 per game, while the Spruce Kings totaled 170 (12th in the league), an average 2.93 per game.
"We've scored 70 more goals in the three years we've been in the league than the next closest team," said Littler. "(This season) we've scored the most goals, we've scored the most goals on the power play and given up the fewest on the PK, so our special teams have been real good. Our philosophy is we want to outscore you, I guess we'd rather outscore you than outdefend you.
"Adam (Maglio) has done a wonderful job up there, getting kids to buy into how he wants to play. I think we would probably be looked at as a very aggressive playmaking team and they would be looked at as a very defensive countering team where you make a mistake, they jump on it and make you pay for it. They have a little bit of everything, obviously getting real good goaltending. They have a enough skill and work super-hard and they're very disciplined so I think it's going to be a great series."
Defensively, Prince George was a bit better over the course of the 58-game season. The Kings allowed a miserly 138 goals (2.33 average, third-best in the BCHL), not far off the Wild's 158 total (2.72 per game, fourth stingiest). Neither team takes many penalties. The Kings led the league as the most disciplined team, with the Wild a close second.
The goaltending of Evan DeBrouwer does give the Spruce Kings an edge. The 20-year-old Ontario import has played all 19 playoff games, posting two shutouts while building a 1.96 goals-against average and .925 save percentage. The latest BCHL playoff of the week came up with 52 saves in a the Kings' double-overtime loss to Powell River in Game 3. DeBrouwer then backstopped consecutive wins, coming up with a 33 saves in a 5-4 win in Game 4 and a 29-save effort in the series-clinching 2-1 overtime win in Game 5. For the Wild, Austin Park has played in all but one playoff game and his numbers (2.43 average, .899 save percentage) aren't as good as DeBrouwer's but he's given them what they need to win playoff games. Five of the Wild's 15 playoff games were one-goal games and Park won them all. The Kings have had eight one-goal games in the postseason, two which needed overtime to decide, and have won five of them.
Kings defenceman Chays Ruddy, 20, who played in the past two RBC Cup national junior A championships for the Trenton Golden Hawks, also won a junior C title in Ontario with the Port Hope Panthers in 2015. Ruddy already had a playoff beard when he got to Prince George for training camp last August and he expects there won't be any reason to shave that off as the Kings pursue the Fred Page Cup and what comes after.
"It's incredible, there's a buzz around town and we put a lot of work in this year and it's pretty special for the guys to get the accolades we all deserve," said Ruddy. "We've come a long way but we also know that if we go out now it's not as sweet as it could be, so there's a lot more work to be put in. Wenatchee is good in their rink but we're also good in our rink and it's going to take a team effort to shut down their top guys, which I know we're more than capable of."
In his last junior hockey season before he moves on to college at Quinnipiac, all de Jong has done as the Kings' top two-way forward is raise his stock as a potential NHL draft pack this June. He ranks second only to Weatherby in BCHL playoff scoring with 10 goals and 23 points and has elevated the play of Ben Brar and Blake Hayward, his usual linemates with injured top-line centre Ben Poisson still on the sidelines. Patrick Cozzi never seems to run out of energy and his puck pursuit has paid off in four goals and 16 playoff points, and he's been feeding the puck to the likes of Dustin Manz, Nolan Welsh and Jarod Hovde to take pressure off the top line. Kyle Johnson, the Kings captain and Yale recruit, is also taking advantage of the postseason to revitalize his game and has the numbers to back that up with six goals and 16 points in 19 games. A healthy Poisson , with his hard shot and face-off ability, would be a coup for the Kings if he's able to come back later in the series.
After struggling in the regular season the Kings have grown more effective on the power play with each series and that has a lot to do with the play of defencemen Ruddy, Dylan Anhorn, Jay Keranen, Layton Ahac and Liam Watson-Brawn, who are getting themselves on the scoresheet with more regularity. Now they're just four wins away from hoisting a trophy.
"In the last two rounds our power play has been excellent, it's been one of the biggest reasons we've been doing so well and having success, and our penalty kill as well, and we want to make sure we keep those numbers high as we roll into the final round," said Anhorn who scored the tying goal in Game 5 against Powell River, his first career BCHL playoff goal. "We're just getting more pucks to the net, more bodies in traffic looking for rebounds instead of trying to play a pretty game.
"This is a huge opportunity, 15 teams in the league have already gone home and we're here playing for a championship. This is what you dream about all season and just to be here it's surreal.
"Wenatchee is having a run as well, we've been able to watch some of their games and they have lot of skill up front and on the back end and if you're not careful defensively and play a tight game they're going to expose you."
Like the Wild, the Spruce Kings are in uncharted territory, about to begin their first BCHL championship series and Kings general manager Mike Hawes, who built the community-owned team along with rookie head coach Adam Maglio through savvy trades and endless recruiting missions is just beginning to see the fruits of his labour. Finishing first in the division and getting to the final makes it much easier to convince top-shelf players to come to play for the Spruce Kings.
"It takes lot of work from a lot of people and it takes everybody pushing in the same direction to get the group to where it is today," said Hawes. "It's a hardworking group of kids, it's a hardworking group of coaches and our volunteers and our board do a great job and it's nice to see everybody rewarded with this long playoff run. I know that after watching Adam for two years as associate coach under Chad (Van Diemen) he has special ability as a coach.
"When Chad made the decision to step down there was no hesitation that Adam was the guy and it certainly has turned out. He garners a ton of respect form the players but at the same time he's young and can relate to them at the same time. You don't get this far into the playoffs without 100 per cent buy-in from the players in what the coach's message is and what he's trying to do."
With 13 hours of driving and 1,000 kilometres of highway separating the two cities, both teams wanted to try to limit travel, especially in the wake of the Humboldt Broncos bus tragedy. The Wild, having home ice advantage based on the fact Wenatchee finished five points better than the Spruce Kings, had the final say in that decision and due to building availability chose the 2-2-1-1-1 format rather than have the Spruce Kings host games 3, 4 and 5, with Games 6 and 7, if needed, in Wenatchee.
Prediction: Home ice will be the difference in this series. The Wild have that going for them to start and the Spruce Kings will have to steal one down south, then win all their home games to get their Cup, which is well within their capabilities. They had to fight through two Game 7s to get this far and showed their resiliency coming back from a 3-1 deficit in a character-building series with Surrey. They know their fans have waited 22 years for a championship parade and that drought is about to end.
Spruce Kings in seven.
