Back a couple months ago, anyone who looked at the schedule for these past couple weeks would probably say that it is a ‘make or break’ stretch for the Comox Valley Glacier Kings. They played Victoria and Oceanside last week and Peninsula and Victoria again this weekend. With the calibre of teams they played, they easily could have gone 0-4. But this Glacier Kings team is so much better now than it was earlier in the year. They went 2-1-1-0 in the 4 games against upper echelon clubs. And if they had a bounce or two go their way, they easily could have been 4-0. Since being crushed by the Panthers a couple times earlier in the season, Comox Valley has really turned things around and could end up being one of the teams to beat at the end of the year.
A week ago Thursday, it was a 1-0 late in the game until Victoria scored an empty net goal to win. Then two days later, Comox took down Oceanside who was in first place at the time. This past weekend was just as impressive with a win in Peninsula and an overtime loss to Victoria. I asked head coach/GM Curt Toneff about the last couple games, “It was a challenging weekend. With Peninsula, the last two times we played them were pretty ugly to be honest, both those games were at home. We went down there and won (their first meeting) on a 3 in 3 (3 games in 3 days). So we went back to that conversation even though we have a lot of new faces. We kinda rallied behind that and said let’s go 2-0 in this building, a pretty simple message. Scoring the first goal really helped. We were down for a good part of the game but getting that tying goal was a big momentum change and helped us rally to get the 2 points.” Comox was actually playing from behind in all 4 of these games that we were discussing from the past two weeks. They definitely showed grit in their comebacks.
In my opinion, if the Glacier Kings would have picked up only 4 points (maybe 3) in the 4 game stretch, I probably would have called it a win. To take down the Peninsula Panthers for a second time this year was a huge confidence builder. Despite the overtime loss to the Cougars on Saturday, Toneff said he thought it was a successful weekend, “Ya I think so. To play two games in a row against what I think are the two best teams in the league and to have the pace, the play and the possession pretty much equal. I think we had the majority of the power plays Friday, I think it was two and two on Saturday. I think that shows that we’re not behind good teams like that. They skate good, in good condition, a little bit bigger and stronger. I’d like to think that we’re equal after the deadline, after we put all of our pieces together.” The Glacier Kings do seem to be up to par with the best teams in the league now. They have proved it by beating every team in the VIJHL except Victoria and they even gave the Cougars a run for their money the past two contests.
After you have two disastrous losses in a row to a team, it could be easy to let that get in your head. Thoughts running through your brain like how good this team is or they creamed us in the past. On Friday the Yeti fell behind 2-0 to the Panthers and the negative thoughts started running through my mind of past games. Curtis said he doesn’t think those negative thoughts were going through his players heads after being down a pair of markers, “Didn’t seem like it. I think that power play goal we scored in the second got the fans into it a little bit. To be honest, I wasn’t sitting on the bench like ‘Hey we’re going to tie this game or we’re going to win this game’, you’re just hoping for a look or a bounce. We got the bounce. I think Mikhalchuk fanned on the shot and it ended up on a tee for Sheldon Alexander and he popped it in. But that’s the way the hockey gods work. You work for your bounces and I thought we worked for our bounce on Saturday.” It’s easy to look at the score when you’re behind, it’s a lot harder to have the mindset on just making a good play. You can’t score two goals on 1 play so you have to just think one play at a time and I think the GKings did that.
It didn’t look promising on Saturday when Comox was down 2-1 late in the third. They threw everything they had at the Cougars but they couldn’t beat Finn Wilson. With only a few minutes left in regulation time, Toneff called a timeout. The Glacier Kings would score just moments later. The bench boss talked about what was said in the timeout, “I think there was three minutes left on the button when I took the timeout. It was an offensive zone face off. I hummed and hawed, I said screw it, let’s do it. What I do, and I hope other teams don’t read this (chuckles), I do ‘power play 1’ and ‘power play 2’ plus one. So it was power play 1 plus (Suhaan) Nagra and then there was power play 2 plus a defenceman if we needed to get there. So if you look at the goal they are all in their power play setups. And then Nagra came off the bench and Sheldon Alexander made a great, great area play with a lot of poise. One of the better plays I’ve seen all year actually. I’m pretty hard on Sheldy but it was a great play, an area pass to Nagra and we got into our power play setup. That’s how we scored.” I can only imagine how fulfilling it must be to pull your goalie and have a plan drawn up and everything work as planned. It took about 5 seconds for the Glacier Kings to score after the goalie was pulled during the live action.
It was definitely a fun weekend to watch hockey. All games were close and went down to the wire. A blown missed penalty on Saturday when the Victoria goalie took his own mask off to get a stoppage and no penalty was issued. I asked the coach if the referees are mandated to blow the whistle if a goalie loses his blocker and he told me no. So if that’s the case, it should have been a penalty in overtime for Delay of Game when he took his mask off to get a stoppage so he could retrieve his blocker. Instead, Victoria wins the faceoff, skates down the ice and scores. That’s the way hockey goes and you move on. The game wouldn’t be as fun if everything always went to script.
Darryl Skender
