The Prince George Spruce Kings owe their fans in Prince George an apology.
They haven’t been around town much lately, and due to their schedule they’re going to have to make themselves scarce again this weekend. But they do intend to make it up to their faithful followers.
That’s a promise from head coach Alex Evin.
“It’s been a road-heavy schedule for us to start the year, we’ve played 11 of our first 17 games on the road,” said Evin. “So we obviously have a lot of new players on the team that are learning how to travel and how we travel and I think for the most part we’re doing OK.
“We’re still trying to find that consistency within the game and game-to-game but we’re seeing some progress with the group and we’re looking forward to this week. It’s a real big grind and we’ve got some good opponents we face.”
After two consecutive weeks without a home game the Kings will be back on familiar ice at Kopar Memorial Arena tonight at 7 p.m. when they face off against the Alberni Valley Bulldogs for their first visit to Prince George since Sept. 27, 2019.
“We haven’t played the Island Division opponents for awhile and we don’t know much about our opponents, we’re more worried about our identity and if we can play to that we’ll have some success,” said Evin. “It will be nice for us to play a game on home ice.”
There won’t be much time for the Spruce Kings to rest up after taking on the Bulldogs. They’ll have a 12-hour bus ride ahead of them Thursday to get to Trail, where they’ll face the Smoke Eaters Friday night. It doesn’t get any easier on Saturday. They’ll be in Penticton that night to try to knock off the high-flying Vees, who are a perfect 18-0 heading into their game Friday at home to West Kelowna.
The Spruce Kings played in Penticton Nov. 4 and lost 4-0 and the on any night the defending BCHL champions are the obvious measuring stick for opponents.
”They have a lot of players from their championship team and that makes them strong naturally and we saw they are playing with good synergy as a group,” Evin said. “It was a good experience for us to play them. Whether we won or lost that game we were going to learn something about our team and we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
The Kings last played a home day on Oct. 29, when they beat the Wenatchee Wild 2-1 to complete a two-game sweep. After the Penticton game they’ll come home and stay in P.G. for consecutive weekend sets against West Kelowna (Nov. 25-26) and Cranbrook (Dec. 2-3).
Four of their seven games in December will be on the road, but in January the Spruce Kings will be home for five of their seven games that month. In February they’ll be the home team for six of nine games but two of those games will be played in Burns Lake, where they will host the Salmon Arm Silverbacks in the BCHL Road Show (Feb. 18-19).
The Kings have been dealing with sickness that knocked a couple players out of the lineup last week when they played a doubleheader in Merritt and that’s meant plenty of line-juggling for Evin. They lost the first game Thursday 3-2 to the Cents and rebounded with a 7-5 victory on Friday afternoon. Defenceman Tait Ross, an 18-year-old Dartmouth College recruit, remains on the 30-day injured list with an upper-body injury. Centre Ty Gagno probably won’t be back for another week. He’s missed five games with a broken hand after picking up three goals and 10 points in his first 12 games.
John Herrington (10-6-16) continues to lead the Spruce Kings in scoring. The Kings have also been sustained offence from 18-year-old Vanderhoof product Linden Makow (8-5-13 ) and 17-year-old rookie Luca Primerano (2-11-13).
“When (Herrington’s) not scoring he’s always doing something positive for our team,” said Evin. “He plays hard all over the ice, always making an impact with our group.”
Herrington has been centring the top line with Makow and Kilian McGregor-Bennett (4-7-11), but that’s not set in stone. Makow has increased his role with the team and is drawing special-teams duty on the power play and killing penalties.
Prince George (10-5-1-1) ranks fourth in the Interior Conference after the Salmon Arm Silverbacks (11-5-0-1) moved a point ahead of them into third place. Alberni Valley (7-8-1-1) is fifth in the Coastal Conference.
