Last weekend's lesson in how not to start a hockey game on the road is tattooed in the brains of the Prince George Spruce Kings.
They went south of the border 13 hours by bus to Wenatchee, Wash., to learn it's never a good idea to spot the top team in the B.C. Hockey League a 3-0 lead after one period. That happened not once but twice on successive nights.
Consequently, the Spruce Kings lost both their weekend games, 6-2 and 5-3, in the graveyard of the BCHL for visiting teams, otherwise known as Town Toyota Center, where the Wild has been nearly perfect (23-0-2-0) this season at home.
"I thought we played well in Wenatchee and did a lot of good things but the starts hurt us, we were down 3-0 both games and they're too good of a team to come from 3-0 deficits," said Spruce Kings captain Brett Mennear.
The series got off to an absolute disaster for the Spruce Kings in Friday's game when they allowed the first goal 14 seconds in and by the 1:47 mark were down 2-0 to the Wild and it was a similar story Saturday.
But it's not all doom and gloom for coach Chad van Diemen's troops. The Spruce Kings are still in the playoff picture, and despite their poor starts they did not get blown out by 11-2 and 8-1 counts, like they did earlier in the season against Wenatchee.
"I thought we were pretty good in the final 40 minutes of both of those games but obviously that doesn't cut it," said van Diemen. "When we've stuck to our gameplan against Wenatchee we don't give up a ton, and when we deviate and don't play our game they have success against us.
"They had 17 shots against us the first period of the first game and they only finished the weekend with 65. So in the last five periods we gave up 48 shots and that's not bad against a team that puts up 50-plus shots a game on most teams.
"Playing catchup is a lot more tiring than playing with a lead and we spent a lot of that game trying to create (offence) and that's when you open up some holes against you that they capitalized on."
The Spruce Kings (19-20-3-2, fourth in Mainland Division) are back on the road this weekend, as they will be for 13 of their 14 remaining games, to play Friday in Merritt, Saturday in Salmon Arm and Sunday in Vernon. They'll be based for their Interior Division tour in Kamloops, a short drive away from all three destinations.
The team is back to full strength for the first time all season with no sick or injured on the 22-player roster. They can only dress 18 skaters and two goalies for games so that means two healthy bodies will be watching Friday's game on the small ice surface in Merritt from the stands.
"Having that accountability, with guys healthy and able to come in and out of the lineup, we've really missed that for the last little while," said van Diemen. "We'll go down a day early and we'll be rested up and there are no excuses. We just have to get off to better starts and play our game."
Eighteen-year-old goalie Tavin Grant, 18, has played in 30 of the 44 games since he joined the Kings in October and has been a workhorse since Stefan Wornig left the team in December for medical reasons. The WHL Cougars' prospect sports a 3.37 goals-against average and .883 save percentage and van Diemen knows he will have to have stingier netminding from Grant in the stretch drive heading into the playoffs.
"I think he would be the first to admit he's been pretty inconsistent," said van Diemen. "He knows and we know how he's capable of playing and we've got to do a better job in front of him at times but we don't want him at the end of games to want any goals back and I think there have been number of those. Similar to our team on the road, it's been up and down."
Prince George has dropped 10 points behind the third-place Langley Rivermen and if the playoffs started today, the Kings would be playing Wenatchee in the first round. They might not want to admit it but the Spruce Kings, who have a 10-point edge over fifth-place Surrey, would much rather face Chilliwack in the first round. It's only 7 1/2 hours away from Prince George and on the ice they've been close to the Chiefs in the season series. Chilliwack has a 3-1 record against the Kings (including an overtime win) but has only outscored them a combined 15-13. By comparison, Wenatchee is 7-0 against the Kings, building a 46-13 goal differential.
"In the first round, anyone's going to be good, whether that's Wenatchee or Chilliwack, and in order to win you're going to have to beat somebody good in that first round," said van Diemen. "(Who they have to play) is not really in our heads right now, we've just got to get back to day-by-day, playing 60-minute hockey games."
Mennear, who scored a goal Friday, has slipped to fourth in the BCHL scoring race with 21 goals 40 assists and 61 points. Along with linemate Chong Hyun Lee and defencemen Tyer Anderson, Connor Russell and Adam Burnett, the 20-year-old Mennear is in his last season of junior. He wants it to last as long as it did last year when he, Anderson and winger Tanner Campbell ran the playoff table and won the RBC Cup national championship with the West Kelowna Warriors.
"We want to be the third seed coming in (to playoffs) and we're going to make a push here at the end of the year and see if it pays off for us," said Mennear. "All the 20s are going to be moving on, this is our last kick at the can, so we have to give it all we've got. I think everyone on the team's going to buy into that and just do it for us especially."
