Victoria Grizzlies News

SURGING GRIZZLIES STYMIE SMOKE EATERS

January 23, 2010 Sharie Epp ©Times Colonist -

Who said winning isn’t fun? Certainly not the Victoria Grizzlies, who are having a heck of a lot of fun these days.

The Grizzlies happily rolled to their seventh straight victory, defeating the Trail Smoke Eaters 4-1 last night at Bear Mountain Arena.

“We’re finally gelling together. It’s good,” said rookie forward Dylan Nowakowski. “We’ve just got to keep going.”

The Grizzlies (26-14-2-5) will attempt to do just that today, when they bus over the Malahat to visit the Cowichan Valley Capitals (17-29-0-2). The Caps edged the Nanaimo Clippers 2-1 on last night. Following their progress will be Minnesota State assistant coach Darren Blue, who was at Bear Mountain for the Trail game, and also watched Victoria’s 2-0 victory over Nanaimo on Wednesday.

“If [the Grizzlies] keep improving their skill level, with their speed and tenacity, they’re going to be hard to play with,” Blue said. “They play hard, with a lot of energy.”

It wasn’t just the Grizzlies who had the energy in yesterday’s game, which began with Victoria’s Brad Nowakowski and Trail’s Sean Nugget trading punches at the three-second mark.

Coming off a moralepumping 5-4 overtime victory in Powell River on their Coastal road trip, the Smokes, now holding down the seventh and last playoff spot in the Interior Conference, swarmed the Victoria zone in the first period. Some timely blocked shots by defenceman Jake Baker, and a couple of point-blank saves by goaltender Ryan Holfeld, were the main reasons the visitors were kept off the scoreboard.

Weathering the Trail storm, the Grizzlies got their own offence moving, and right after Baker had blocked his third shot of the night, he assisted on a goal by Greg Simpson at 7:36 of the first period. Two minutes later, on the power play, Alex Allan fired his 19th of the season to give the Grizz a 2-0 lead.

“I just think we played a really good solid game,” coach Victor Gervais said. “We didn’t give them many chances.”

The Grizzlies, sometimes guilty of secondperiod letdowns, were having none of that against Trail. If anything, they picked things up a notch and held the Smoke Eaters to a mere four shots in the second period. Brandon Fagerheim added a buzzerbeater to put Victoria up a comfortable three goals by the second break.

“It’s pretty simple hockey,” Nowakowski said. “We’re just getting over the red line and chipping it in, not trying to deke through everybody.”

“We’re just getting shots on net.”

Scott Jacklin foiled Holfeld’s shutout bid on a power-play at 14:28 of the third, but Trail only managed 17 shots on net overall, and never mounted a comeback. Joel Lowry finished the evening with an emptynetter.

BEAR TRACKS: Playing his first game back since breaking a leg in the first game of the season, Sean Robertson got a big ovation from the Bear Mountain fans. … Victoria curler Glen Jackson, who recently qualified for the B.C. men’s curling championship with skip Jay Tuson, showed he can handle a hockey stick as well as a curling rock. In the shoot-to-win contest during last night’s firstperiod break, Jackson shot a puck from centre ice and hit a tiny target at the goal crease to win a 40-inch flat screen television. . . . GM Darcy Rota has taken over as coach of the Burnaby Express, with assistants Bill Zaharia and Tyler Kuntz, after Dave McLellan was fired on the weekend.