The Prince George Spruce Kings know they let one slip away on them Wednesday night at the Coliseum.The West Kelowna Warriors went home with a 6-4 victory decided by a late-game power-play goal and an empty-netter. Warriors defenceman Kristian Blumenschein took advantage of the extra ice with only four Spruce Kings skaters to worry about and potted the winner with seven minutes gone in the third period.
That happened while Kings defenceman Ryan Fritz was sitting in the penalty box after he took a swing at the unprotected head of Warriors forward Liam Blackburn, who had lost his helmet when he got checked into the boards. Fritz's momentary lapse of discipline proved a costly mistake for a Spruce Kings team which has had great difficulty manufacturing wins this season in the B.C. Hockey League. The Warriors' power play, ranked second in the league, made the Spruce Kings pay.
"I definitely liked the moxie that our team showed. It was a chippy game and sometimes those are games you need to have to reinvent yourself as a group but you need to be disciplined at the same time," said Spruce Kings general manager Mike Hawes.
"It's OK to play a physical, in-your-face type of game but you can't take penalties that are going to hurt your hockey team and that happened on a couple of occasions (Wednesday) night. Hopefully we've learned from that and can use it to our advantage moving forward."
Hawes has been encouraged by his team's improved play the past couple weeks. Although it doesn't show it in the standings, players like Jake LeBrun and Matthew Stief are making significant contributions to the offence, with steady input all season from Corey Hoffman and defenceman Adam Brubacher, who leads the Spruce Kings in scoring with seven goals and 19 points in 25 games.
While penalty killing remains an Achilles heel (Prince George ranks 16th out of 17, allowing other teams' power plays to score 73.91 per cent of the time), their own power play is much improved from the start of the season (they rank 11th overall at 18.75 per cent)
"It's taken a couple of months but the players are really starting to buy in now to the new coaches and their systems and we see it in games like (Wednesday) night where a very good Kelowna team came to the rink and it was seesaw battle either way - we easily could have won that game," said Hawes.
The Spruce Kings are home to the Salmon Arm Silverbacks tonight at 7 at the Coliseum, then host the Powell River Kings Sunday at 3 p.m. Heading into Friday's game in Chiliwack, Powell River, the third-ranked team in the Island Division, had a 12-10-0-0 record. The Silverbacks rank second in the Interior Division with a 15-5-2-1 record (not including Friday's game at home against Alberni Valley).
One of the Silverbacks' regulation losses was to the Spruce Kings. Backed by a 37-save performance from goalie Liam McCloskey, the Spruce Kings finished off a three-game road trip Oct. 11 with a 4-3 win in Salmon Arm.
"They're both very good teams in our league and always come in and play us tough in our building," said Hawes. "We have had some success against Salmon Arm and hopefully we can use that as a bit of springboard ahead of that game Saturday night.
"We'll tweak some of the things we didn't like in the game (Wednesday) like our discipline, and move forward as we head into the weekend."
Spruce Kings forward Nik Ponak suffered a shoulder injury Wednesday and will be out at least two weeks. He had been playing right wing on the Spruce Kings' top line with LeBrun and Bryan Basilico. Ponak joins defenceman Cooper Prechel (concussion) on the sidelines. Hawes is still trying to move 20-year-old defenceman Rylan Bechtel, acquired over the summer in a trade from Cowichan Valley which sent defenceman Mitch Meek to Duncan. Bechtel left the Spruce Kings a month ago requesting a trade. In 10 games he had a goal and five assists.
