In the midst of a heated playoff race Powell River Kings chose a great time to get hot.
Three more wins, 3-1 over Coquitlam Express on Thursday, February 2, 2-1 over Nanaimo Clippers on Friday and finally 2-1 against Victoria Grizzlies Saturday, have given them some breathing room in the Coastal Conference standings.
BC Hockey League took notice of the Super Bowl and moved its weekend schedule up a day so none of the team would play on Sunday.
Consequently Coquitlam, a team Powell River had yet to beat in four tries, moved in to Hap Parker Arena on Thursday to start things off.
Despite a fast-paced first period neither team could put the puck in the net until early in the second when Kings’ Cohen Adair finished a pretty passing play started by captain Chris Williams.
“I saw Teagan [Waugh] with the puck and there was a big area of ice so I just jumped in and yelled for it,” said Williams. He skated up the wall and passed the puck to Evan Richardson. “Once he and Cohen have a two on one it’s usually going to end up in the net.”
The lone goal held up until very late in the third period when Waugh took a penalty with two minutes to go.
Coquitlam fortified their already deadly powerplay by pulling the goalie for a two-man advantage but Steven Schmidt hit the empty net at 19:32 to score the eventual winner.
Kings needed Schmidt’s goal because Coquitlam broke the shutout bid of Sean Maguire at 19:48 by slipping a screen shot in from the point before Brendon MacDonald scored the Kings’ final 3-1 goal at 19:54.
It was not quite as neat as the Kings would have liked but Williams said, “We came into this game 0-3-1 against them and three out of the four our penalty kill cost us.” The team prepared for Coquitlam by watching video of the previous games and “we got jacked up every time we had to go out for a kill,” he said of the team’s one for six penalty kill performance. “It just comes down to grit and blocking shots and we did that well tonight.”
Kent Lewis, head coach and general manager, praised his special teams as well but wasn’t as happy with the way things went between the whistles.
“It’s nice when the opposing teams can control the tempo of the game with their line changes,” he said of the delays caused by Coquitlam’s bench. “That’s two weekends in a row when we’ve had to deal with that crap and that’s got to get fixed.”
Kings sailed over to Nanaimo to meet the Clippers and former teammates Brenden Forbes and Taylor Carmola, on Friday.
This game was played very close to the vest with each team managing just one goal in regulation.
MacDonald, with his second of the game in double overtime, was the hero for the Kings when he followed the big body of Adair right into the paint and slipped the puck past the game’s second star Billy Faust of the Clippers.
Faust was the second star because Kings’ Maguire got the nod for number one after he stopped 38 of 39 shots for the 2-1 win.
Last stop on the trip was to Bear Mountain Arena to take on a depleted Grizzlies side Saturday.
Ironically, most of Kings’ fans were enjoying The Fab Fourever Beatles tribute concert at Powell River Recreation Complex and as the Kings were down 1-0 early to the Grizzlies the band was playing Help.
Kings surely could have used some to solve Grizzlies’ netminder Taylor Pears as he just about stood on his head to save all but two of the 54 shots fired at him.
Richardson and Adair took those and the Kings escaped Victoria with their third win, 2-1, and in doing so completed a run of 10 wins in their last 10 games.
Coquitlam returns to Powell River this weekend for two more cracks at the Kings, 7:30 pm on Saturday, February 11 and then 1:30 pm on Sunday, February 12.
