The Victoria Grizzlies maintained their grip on first place overall in the B.C. Hockey League with a 6-5 win over the visiting Prince George Spruce Kings at Bear Mountain Arena on Friday night.
Storm Wahlrab scored a pair of goals to pace the hosts, who improve to 28-10-3-2, but they were hanging on by their fingernails after letting a 6-3 lead get away with two late Prince George power-play goals.
“I’m not going to worry about two minutes of hockey where I don’t necessarily know if those calls were good ones,” said Grizzlies head coach Craig Didmon. “I thought we played a pretty good 58 minutes of hockey tonight.
“We came out hard. There were a couple of letdowns defensively, but our chances were there and 20 guys came to play.”
It started off fast and furious as Grizzlies defenceman Jaden Schmeisser picked the top corner on Spruce Kings goalie Alex Murray just 1:20 in on a Victoria power play. But Braiden Epp replied just 43 seconds later on a partial break as he slipped the puck through Alec Dillon’s legs.
Dillon had shut out the Spruce Kings 1-0 earlier this season in Prince George.
Wahlrab gave the Grizzlies a 2-1 lead at 13:23 of the opening frame as he used his long reach to tuck the puck in off a scramble.
Brandon Egli and Wahlrab, with his second, made it 4-1 before Brent Lashuk closed the gap at 14:15 of the second.
Jesse Schwartz, finishing off a tic-tac-toe play on a power play, and Cole Pickup (nifty outside-in move on the defenceman) scored third-period goals for Victoria before penalties caught up to them. Lashuk had collected his second of the night for Prince George before Justin Rai and Mitch Eden added power-play goals in the last two minutes.
The Grizzlies were coming in off a disappointing 4-3 loss in Nanaimo on Wednesday, while Prince George was riding a three-game win streak that had the Spruce Kings sitting fifth overall in the BCHL.
“We’re hanging in there. Second in our division, three games in hand, so this was one of the games in hand. We’d like to close that gap [on Langley],” said Spruce Kings head coach Dave Dupas. “This was a tough building to do it in, but if we’re going to go anywhere in this league we’re going to have to win in buildings like this.”
The Spruce Kings will move on to Cowichan Valley and Nanaimo looking to improve on the result as they wrap up the weekend road trip. The Grizzlies are back at it tonight at home at 7:15 p.m. against the Powell River Kings in a key Island Division matchup.
Powell River battled back from a 1-0 deficit after two periods to defeat Nanaimo 2-1 on Friday to stay one point back of Victoria with two games in hand.
mannicchiarico@timescolonist.com
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