The Comox Valley Glacier Kings are on a two week break, at least the ones that didn’t play in the VIJHL all-star and Top Prospects games. This was a weird part of the schedule but I’ll get into that later. Things are back to normal now and the team is getting ready for its tilt against the Victoria Cougars tomorrow.

The team has been playing well lately and are working hard to try and keep that going. Head coach/GM Curtis Toneff has been looking at ways of keeping his club focused. It hasn’t worked out as well as he had hoped because of logistical problems. The coach talked about practices, “Last week we went back to skills and small area games. I thought it was a good opportunity to do that with the time off we have. We took a few days off at the all-star break. Our players got home from the all-star break late so they had to miss practice again because of cancelled flights. So now we have 2 practices leading up to the Victoria game Thursday which is a little bit less than you’d like but it’s a good opportunity for us to get back to our system play and game play and get our intensity up for the Cougars.” Glacier King players that were involved in the all-star game were Cameron Collins, Zaya Morro and Leon Mikhalchuk. The only player of the three to record a stat in the game was Mikhalchuk who got a 5-minute major for fighting against Jacob Bernardo of the Victoria Cougars late in the first period. Collins also played in the Top Prospects game and scored a goal. Westin Churchill collected 2 assists and Anthony Ganoung stopped 12 of 15 shots in his 30 minutes of action.

I was looking at some league stats yesterday and when I dug into special teams, it was so easy to see how important that part of the game is in this league. Did you know the top 4 teams in the league hold the top 4 power play percentages. And to prove the point even more, the top 3 teams in the VIJHL hold down the top 3 penalty killing percentages. Special teams are a huge part of the game and can quite often mean the difference between winning and losing. Comox is 7th on the PP and 6th when killing penalties. I asked the coach about this topic. He said, “When it comes to the power play, most teams have a number one unit and a number two unit. Our power play looks like it’s most successful when we do a little bit less by taking what’s given to us. We move the puck quick, we get inside the interior of the ice and get to the net a little bit. We’ve had some success on the power play as of late. The PK, we’ve been solid. There’s been some nights I think where we’ve given up 3 or 4 where its cost our percentage a little bit. Two or three of those games were by far out of reach or were put out of reach anyway. I agree that special teams are important but sometimes you have to look past that first and second layer and evaluate it closer. I think that at the end of the day we have the potential of having two great power play units and have the potential to be a top 2 or top 3 team on the PK as long as we can execute coming down the stretch and into the playoffs. I believe we have the tools to do so.” Newly acquired forward Easton Sangris should help out. In fact, he scored a PP goal in just his second game with the team on January 4th. Leon Mikhalchuk leads the squad with 6 goals with the man advantage which also places him in a tie for 6th place overall in that category.

Earlier I had mentioned that this was a weird part of the schedule. I say that because the Yeti had played 6 games in 12 days (Dec. 10-21). Since then, they play just 4 times in 31 days. That’s because after the Christmas break they only played 2 weekends before having another break in their schedule. It’s also in the midst of a 4-game road stretch. It’s really too bad because they have been playing well and racking up points. To be fair, part of the extended time off is in part due to the All-Star and Top Prospect games. The GKings have gone from 12-13-2-1 on December 10th to 18-14-4-1 right now. One has to hope that all this time off hasn’t hurt their momentum. The Glacier Kings bench boss says it’s not an ideal situation, “To be honest, it’s been quite annoying, we had a great Christmas break, we had played a lot of hockey before and to come and play 4 games and then head into another break is tough. It’s been positive in the sense of figuring out some of the logistics of some guys, having them settle in and as far as practicing and getting some chemistry built because we have made some moves of late. It’s a little annoying but after the first or second period Thursday night, it won’t matter anymore. Hopefully the rest restores itself. We have no excuses now.” Another weird part of the schedule is that the Cougars and Glacier Kings have only played once through the first 37 games and now play 3 times in 3 weeks. The first game didn’t go so well, hopefully this one will be different.

Darryl Skender