The Comox Valley Glacier Kings have been playing very good hockey in the past couple months and one of the reasons is because of their grittiness. Unfortunately the GKings aren’t the type of team that can rely just on skill alone like some other teams in the VIJHL. They rely on fundamental defensive hockey, good goaltending and the aforementioned grit. So far it has been working and as the season goes on, the players are buying in more and more and are being given more freedom to do more offensively.

It seems that head coach/GM Curtis Toneff is getting a lot out of his club right now but he sees that his guys can still do more. When it comes to being physical, he says he’s happy with some aspects but other parts can improve, “I like our d-zone physicality, I think we can go in and be heavier on the forecheck. I really liked our ‘protect the team’ mentality. Some guys, I’m not gonna lie, have kept their jobs because they’ve shown that the team and the logo on the jersey is more important than themselves by sacrificing and putting their body on the line. You know a guy has gotten a cheap shot 3 of the last 4 games and there’s a guy right there answering the bell and holding them accountable. Social media can be positive and negative, let’s face it everyone can see everything. Clearly seeing these fights, people will think twice before taking liberties with our players in vulnerable spots.” Comox is averaging 19.5 penalty minutes per game. Some of that is from being over-physical and a lot of it still stems from being undisciplined. In the North Division, the teams with the 3 least amount of penalty minutes are also the bottom 3 teams in the division. Maybe sometimes taking aggressive penalties is necessary. Nanaimo has the most PIM’s followed by Oceanside and Comox Valley and those squads are 1-2-3 in that same order.

Hockey has always been a rough sport compared to a lot of other ones. Over the past decade or two, rules have been put in place to try and stop players from getting hurt. There was a big backlash from fans and players themselves saying that certain rules make it easier for certain types of incidents to happen because there can be no recourse. Doesn’t matter what side of the fence you sit on, it has been a much talked about topic. I am onboard with the old school way of thinking. If you intentionally take a shot against a team’s star player, goalie or much smaller opponent, you may have to answer the bell when it comes to making sure it doesn’t happen again. In the past couple games, we have seen examples of where Glacier Kings teammates have had each others backs. On Thursday in Victoria, Joseph Melichar kneed Tee Hagel and Brandon Taylor immediately stuck up for his teammate. Then on Saturday in Oceanside, Brodie Wade caught Cameron Collins with a huge open ice hit and Easton Sangris answered the bell for his linemate. I asked Toneff if the game is changing since the VIJHL became independent of Hockey Canada. “With our rules, it’s obviously not something we encourage and I never thought the game would go back like it has a little bit. If you look at the big picture, there’s not a ton of head shots like there was 4 or 5 years ago when maybe these kids were wearing cages or when there was big suspensions for fights. We don’t encourage 16 and 20 year old kids to punch each other in the head but at the end of the day it’s kind of helping the honor of the game in my opinion. I’m a little bit old school and most guys would tell you that but if the head shots are going down, guys have more respect for each other and you create a bigger team environment around it as long as you don’t go back to the barbaric days like the old ‘jungle’, it’s how the game is played.” I still watch those old clips of junior hockey when it was the ‘wild west’ with tons of scoring and tons of fighting. Comparing those days with todays games… both are entertaining but today’s game is a better calibre of hockey and also a lot more safe.

Brandon Taylor has played in 22 games (16 with Comox) this season as he has been trying to earn minutes. Going into Thursday’s game in Victoria, he had never had a fighting major in his VIJHL career which started in 2023. He did not hesitate to go after Joseph Melichar once he saw that the referee wasn’t going to call a penalty. Curtis liked that he had his teammate’s back, “Brandon Taylor is a guy that, you know he was out of the line up, had limited minutes and was kind of on the fringe there for a little bit. I think he knew that. He would do ‘that’ (fight on Thursday) and then had a really good game in Oceanside on Saturday. He’s been in the league for three years and it’s nice to have that veteran depth back there and a local guy. He is very low maintenance and has been a sneaky good pick up for us.” The 5’10” defenceman from Courtenay has 2 assists and 9 penalty minutes since coming over from Nanaimo earlier this season.

As important as being physical is, the Glacier Kings obviously have some skill as well. And recently, they just upgraded in that department by signing Rolan Amin who is a familiar face in these parts. Amin has not only been able to rack up points wherever he has played but he has also played in leadership roles. The Yeti signed the 20 year old about a week and a half ago after playing in the BCHL. The Glacier Kings bench boss talked about the Burnaby native, “Rolan was committed and playing in Humboldt at the start of the year and they had a big trickle down from the Western Hockey League which ended up costing him his spot there. It’s never easy when that happens. There was about a week where he was wondering where his future was at with hockey. He decided to play at home in the ‘PIJHL’ but I think a couple weeks in or a month in he really missed the environment in Comox, being with his teammates. He still had that desire to get to the next level but after Christmas he decided to come back and it didn’t really cost us anything to get him back because his rights belonged to us in our league. It’s nice to get him back. We now have three former captains, we have our current captain Kyle Mayenburg, Rolan wore the ‘C’ for us last year and we have Gavin Munro who wore the ‘C’ with the Nanaimo Buccaneers last year. I think our leadership in our room is or should be as good or better than any team but I think we can improve in a lot of areas and luckily we have 9 more games to do so.” For the Yeti last season, Amin put up 10G, 22A, 32Pts in 28 games. He also amassed 29 points in 23 games with the Burnaby Steelers this year before becoming a Glacier king for a second time on January 19th.

It’s ‘Gameday’ tomorrow and Comox will be taking on the class of the VIJHL. The Peninsula Panthers come into their home game with a 31-5-1-0 record. Comox has handed the Panthers one of those five losses but overall have been outscored by a 23-7 margin in their 3 meetings. It’s their final head to head game in the regular season and it would be a nice accomplishment if they could tie the season series. I will have a full preview of that matchup tomorrow as well as the GKings lineup in the “Gameday Lineups” page on this blog. Have a good Thursday everybody.

Darryl Skender