Mario Annicchiarico / Times Colonist
Photo Credit: John’s Photography
JANUARY 27, 2017 10:34 PM
The West Kelowna Warriors limped into town with five affiliated players on the roster on Friday night.
The defending B.C. Hockey League and Royal Bank Cup champions hobbled right back out after the Victoria Grizzlies pasted the banged-up visitors 7-2 in front of an announced crowd of 1,289 at The Q Centre.
Nick Guiney and Jamie Rome scored a pair of goals and Carter Berger collected his third in the last two games as the locals bounced back from an early 1-0 deficit against former Grizzlies and Salsa head coach Rylan Ferster’s troops, scoring five times in the second period.
“I thought we started a little slow,” said Grizzlies general manager and head coach Craig Didmon. “We certainly weren’t happy with our effort in the first and they came out and had a big second.
“It was good to have that second. [Assistant coach] Jason Reimer called it, that we would get five in the second and I sort of looked at him. But it was good to see the guys respond. I wasn’t happy with the first and neither were our captains.”
The Warriors opened the scoring just 4:06 into the game as Braiden Epp broke in alone on Victoria netminder Matthew Galajda and somehow managed to bang the puck in.
Guiney knotted it up seven minutes later on a 4-on-4 situation as he found himself alone to the side of Cole Demers’ net.
He tallied his second at 3:02 of the middle frame before Berger beat Demers on a softy from well out 3:37 later. That chased the Warriors’ starter from the net as he was replaced by Gabriel Morency.
Rome (who just returned from the CJHL Prospects Game in Cornwall, Ont., where Team West defeated the East 4-3 on Wednesday), Drayson Pears and Tyler Welsh then welcomed Morency with three goals in a 2:06 span and he was pulled with Demers going back in between the pipes.
Chase Dubois cut it to 6-2 a minute later for West Kelowna, and that’s how the teams went to the second intermission.
Rome added his second midway through the third period.
Pears finished with a goal and two assists and Keyvan Mokhtari, who like Berger scored twice on Wednesday in Port Alberni, had two helpers.
Victoria heads right back on the road to face the Bulldogs in Port Alberni tonight.
On Friday, the Grizzlies scratched Nico Somerville and Shawn O’Malley and T.J. Friedmann returned from injury.
