Powell River Kings felt like they let one get away after a 7-5 loss to Nanaimo Clippers on Friday, November 23. They responded with a great effort and won 5-2 in the rematch on Saturday.
Entering the weekend they trailed the Clippers by three points in the standings but missed an opportunity to vault themselves from fourth up to the top to tie Victoria Grizzlies.
After a furious first 10 minutes in game one Matt Scarth put the Kings on the board on the powerplay at 11:42.
That was the last time the Kings had the lead, however, as the Clippers scored the next two and then held Powell River off for the remainder of the game.
Stephen Hiff, James Neil, Drew Dorantes and JP Villeneuve all scored to keep the Kings within reach, but in this game their defence was porous and Nanaimo took full advantage of the mistakes.
Jonah Imoo, who allowed four goals on 13 shots, was pulled midway through the second and his replacement Braeden Ostepchuk stopped 10 of 12 shots to record the loss. The final goal was into an empty net.
It wasn’t like the Kings didn’t get their chances to score. In fact there were many glorious ones, but in a shootout players have to make good on them.
“Crossbar in the second and an open netter I missed,” said Villeneuve, “then my luck changed for me in the third and I got one on the board.”
The open netter he was talking about was a pass from linemate Matt Dupont right to the front of the goal. “Sometimes when you’re trying too hard I put too much weight on my stick so that the defenceman wouldn’t hack it out and it bounced just by the post,” he explained. “We’re disappointed with the loss and we’re going to come back tomorrow ready to get the two points.”
Villeneuve was true to his word as he was instrumental in building a five-goal lead for the Kings in the second game.
For the second night in a row, Scarth got the opener when he jumped on a puck that came right out to him off the back boards and he drilled it in at 11:28.
Villeneuve scored a beauty when he grabbed the puck, raced down the ice and unleashed a hard wrist shot high on the glove side at 12:48.
In the second period, Evan Richardson won the faceoff then took the puck back to wire a low shot in at 6:51.
Kings showed no mercy on Saturday as Villeneuve got his second at 1:31 and Hiff scored at 8:44 on the powerplay to complete the Kings’ scoring in the third.
Nanaimo got a couple of late goals, but it wasn’t nearly enough to keep the Kings from recording their 12th win of the season.
The result cheered up Villeneuve and his teammates. “We’re much happier with the outcome tonight,” he said.
He earned the first star with a couple of goals, his first one a crisp shot to the top corner.
“I was on the powerplay and [Jordan] Burns gave me a great tape-to-tape breakout pass and I just saw that the defence had backup so I exposed them and went full boar and took a hard shot and it went in.”
After his second goal he worked hard to get a hat trick.
“I can’t lie,” he said, “I was really trying to get that third one but, another time.” Having said that, he stressed, “The win is better than a hat trick.”
Of the weekend set, coach and general manager Kent Lewis said, “Last night was a strange game where we held a club to 24 shots and just the mental weakness we had and the goals we gave up was very frustrating. Today was a huge bounce back just by playing our game,” he explained with a hint of frustration, “and we didn’t give them four on twos and ridiculous opportunities to score. If we had played smarter like today last night we would have had the same result.”
Kings host Trail Smoke Eaters (11-6-0-1) at 7:30 pm on Friday, November 30 and then travel to Nanaimo on Saturday, December 1, to play the Clippers.
Kings Scroll:
Kings’ mascot Rocco opened the weekend sporting a beautiful new look provided by First Credit Union.
Sean Maguire has earned Hockey East’s rookie of the week honour after posting his first NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) shutout this weekend. The 4-0 win over St. Lawrence was his second of the year.
