Who let the dogs out, you ask?
Well on Thursday night it certainly wasn’t the Victoria Grizzlies, who managed to collar the host Alberni Valley Bulldogs 7-0 to snap a two-game B.C. Hockey League losing stretch with a rare road victory in Port Alberni.
The Grizzlies now stretch their lead in fourth place in the Island Division to three points over the ’Dogs as Victoria improves to 14-19-0-4 overall. Alberni Valley slips to 13-18-2-1, but the Bulldogs do have three games in hand.
It was just Victoria’s fifth away win to move to 5-12-0-1 on the road as the Grizzlies came into the matchup with the third worst away record in the league.
It came at a critical time as the Christmas break nears. The Grizzlies will play host to the Nanaimo Clippers on Saturday at 7 p.m. at The Q Centre and then will enjoy a lengthy Christmas break as they do not return to action until Jan. 8. Victoria is 13 points back of the division-leading Clippers.
“We have a plan in place to get four points this week and we’ve got two of them down,” said Grizzlies general manager and head coach Craig Didmon. “We felt we could out-chance them and we were successful at that.”
Already without Nick Guiney, due to an upper body injury, the Grizzlies lost Joey Visconti in the first period on a hit from behind and then subsequently lost Drayson Pears in a fight with Josh Adkins as Pears came to Visconti’s defence. Both Pears and Adkins were ejected.
The first period went scoreless and the Grizzlies were outshot 8-4. But Keyvan Mokhtari (who was also later ejected for fighting) and Mitchell Barker scored in an 11-second span early in the second to take control.
Barker and Cole Pickup finished with two goals each, while Dante Hahn and Jared Virtanen — with his first goal as a Grizzly — added the others. Virtanen and Hahn each added two assists.
Matthew Galajda earned his 12th win in net in his last 19 games for the Grizzlies and recorded his second shutout with 29 saves. The Bulldogs countered with Brody Claeys, who made 27 stops.
