No matter what they tried, the Prince George Spruce Kings could not score on the Coquitlam Express.
The playoff goaltending of Gordie Defiel defied logic.
Defiel's 31-save magic between the pipes brought the Spruce Kings' season to an abrupt end Tuesday night in Coquitlam in a 2-1 loss in Game 6 of the Mainland Division semifinal series. Defiel, a 21-year-old from Stillwater, Minn., gave the Express the kind of stellar netminding he rarely showed the Spruce Kings in the regular season. He won four of six playoff games with a 1.90 goals-against average and .944 save percentage that left the Kings wondering what went wrong.
"We seemed to be snakebitten all series," said Spruce Kings head coach Dave Dupas. "The goaltender we chased a bunch of times this season and were able to score on, we couldn't score on him this series."
Kings' Skylar Pacheco and Jeremiah Luedtke both clanged iron behind Defiel in that final period and the Kings were denied the tying goal at the midway mark of the third when an official ruled the puck was punched over the line by the gloved hand of a Spruce King.
"It was really disappointing but we left it too late and got behind in the series and it's really tough against a good team to come back," said Dupas. "We put ourselves in that situation."
Game 2 at the Coliseum was the obvious turning point, a game that got away on the Kings. They outshot the Express 41-23 and outchanced them by a wide margin but thanks largely to Defiel lost 3-2. In that game, the Kings went 0-5 on the power play, a sign of things to come the rest of the series. In 30 power-play chances in the six games the Kings scored just twice.
Coquitlam was no great shakes with the man advantage either, going 1-for-23, but the one power-play goal the Express scored -- Bo Piper's midair swat of a puck that had bounced off the end boards 10:13 into the second period Tuesday -- was the series-clincher.
Injuries to key players also damaged the Kings hopes of advancing to the second round. Twenty-year-old captain Bryant Christian took a puck in the face in Game 1 and missed the next three games. Power forward Brent Lashuk, Christian's linemate and the Kings' second-leading goal scorer with 22 in the regular season, suffered a season-ending knee injury two games before the playoffs started. Then Karan Toor, one of the unsung heroes on the Kings blueline, went down with a lower-body injury in Game 2 of the series. Cooper Rush, a 20-year-old who had 29 points in 40 games, was acquired in January in a trade with Chilliwack to fill the role as a top-four defenceman but played just one period for the Kings before he hurt his knee.
"We did have high expectations, tempered a little bit after we got all those injuries," said Dupas. "We can't make any excuses, the guys who were there had to get the job done and we didn't get the job done. But it's really tough when you lose two-thirds of one of our top-two lines and our No. 1 shutdown defencemen. Those people you have to think would make a difference in the series."
The Kings finished the regular season in second place, 11 points ahead of third-place Coquitlam and pretty much owned the Express in the regular season series, going 7-1-1. But in six playoff games against the most potent offence in the BCHL the Spruce Kings were outscored 17-12 and failed to score more than three times in any of the games.
"In the game they won 6-3 [Game 3], they got two goals off skates and one off a butt and on the fifth goal that really ended it we were on a power play and our goalie [Alex Murray] rims the puck around to Skylar [Pacheco] and it hits his skate and spits right into the slot to one of their guys standing there with an open net," said Dupas. "Those things kept happening."
None of that matters now. The Express are moving on to Round 2 of the playoffs for the first time since 2007. That starts Friday in Langley against the Langley Rivermen, who beat Surrey 6-1 Tuesday to win the series in six games.
The Interior Division final starts Friday in Penticton when the Vees host the Vernon Vipers. Penticton swept Merritt in four, while the Vipers finished off the West Kelowna Warriors with a 5-0 win Tuesday in Vernon. The Powell River Kings eliminated the Nanaimo Clippers in five games. They play the winner of the Victoria Grlizzlies-Alberni Valley Bulldogs series, which needed Game 7 to decide Wednesday in Victoria. The Grizzlies??? prevailed ????? and on Friday will host Game 1 of the best-of-seven Island Division final.
