Nov. 22nd vs. Nanaimo Buccaneers

Good Evening Hockey Fans,
Well Friday evening is once again upon us and that means one thing - it’s Hockey Night on the Peninsula.  Tonight your Panthers will host the North Division leading Nanaimo Buccaneers for the 2nd week in a row, our 3rd meeting of this regular season.  As the VIJHL plays an unbalanced schedule this will be the Bucs final regular season visit into the friendly confines of the Panorama Recreation Centre.  We will meet only once again unless we end up going head-to-head in the playoffs and that will be when we travel to Nanaimo on January 25th.

The two Clubs have split our two meetings so far, Nanaimo winning the first game at home by a 4-3 count.  Joey Karrer started between the pipes that night and was solid for the entire game making key saves at various points.  But we still trailed by a goal and with just over a minute left in the game, he was yanked from the cage for an extra attacker.  Nanaimo took a late penalty and we enjoyed a two-man advantage and with 20 ticks left on the clock, Reece Costain found himself all alone in front of the Bucs net with their goaltender out of position.  The puck was bouncing around and before he could corral it and send it into the wide open cage, their ‘tender managed to scramble back in and shut the door.  It was a game of, “would have, could have,” and in the end we jumped onto the bus and headed home disappointed with the outcome.  Last Friday many of you were here and watched the first ten minutes as the Bucs were really all over us.  Stephen Heslop stood on his head during the barrage and we only trailed 1-0 on a Lynden Eddy goal.  With just seconds to go in the first period, the play came out of the Buccaneers end however, Jackson Skerratt lost an edge and was a full two lines behind everyone.  The puck turned over to Sean Buchanan near our blueline and he chipped it off the boards to Matt Sheeran.  The Bucs were caught a bit flat-footed and a couple of their defence were changing and as luck would have it, Jackson would get the puck just as he crossed the Bucs line coming out of their end.  He was barely onside, spun around and went in on a breakaway.  I was standing with two scouts from the Victoria Grizzlies Hockey Club and as soon as he received the pass I said something like, “He is the guy I want to have the puck in this situation.”  Only a couple seconds later Jackson made a sweet little deke and made no mistake knotting the game at 1-1. 

I really felt this goal was the TSN turning point in the game.  Heslop had kept us in for the first ten minutes and then the game evened out, but when Skerratt scored and sent us to the rooms tied, it was a real uplifting feeling for the team.  We went on to dominate the 2nd frame scoring three unanswered goals and eventually skated off with a 4-2 win.  There were so many things I liked about the game.  We were short-handed with Ben Meek, Cole Glover, Tate Coughlin, Brett Sjerven and Iver Oedegaard all on the sidelines with an array of injuries.  To add to our troubles, Reece Costain was with the Grizzlies on a three-game roadie in the Lower Mainland and Spencer Loverock was travelling with the Nanaimo Clippers for a three-game Interior swing.  We had called up two affiliate players but were still two under the limit in terms of numbers so going into that one, all was not looking rosy.  It was clearly my favourite win of the season and it came on a night we tabbed as “First Nation Youth Appreciation.”

Tonight Meek will be out however, I expect that the other six will be available.  I am writing this on Thursday evening so things might change but we should have a much stronger lineup than we have had for a couple weeks.  I wanted to speak a bit about Brett Sjerven, the 19-year-old product of Peninsula Minor Hockey and the Captain of our Club.  I watched him practice last week - he had been out for a couple weeks due to injury - and although he looked not bad, he left practice early as he was just not quite right.  Last Friday he declared himself ready to go and brought his gear to the rink fully expecting to draw into the lineup.  He is a hard-nosed competitor and when he was told he was not going to be inked in, he was visibly upset.  I explained to Brett that waiting a week might be the difference between being ready to go or hurting himself and being forced out of the lineup for a protracted period of time.  Of course he was having no part of this, he was not exactly happy with the decision.  His reaction is only one of the reasons we love him.  Brett is a team player through and through and wants to win as badly as anyone.  With all things being equal, I would expect that #5 will once again be taking the warmup and should pick up 12-15 minutes of ice this evening.  He won’t be used a ton in his first game back but I have no doubt that he will have some impact on this game.

I think I will once again explain what the playoff structure is this season as tomorrow night marks the 1/2 way mark in our regular season schedule.  We will travel to Kerry Park to take on the vastly-improved Islanders squad.  Take a look at the back and you will see the standings in both the North and South Divisions.  There are four teams in the North, five in the South including the Peninsula Panthers.  At the end of the regular season, the team with the fewest points will put away their hockey gear and begin working on their golf games and for the other eight Clubs will begin their quest to win the Island and then head to Nelson for the Cyclone Taylor Cup Championship.  If the season were to end tonight, the Oceanside Generals would be knocked out and the last place team in the South - the Saanich Braves - would take the 4th place seed in the North and the playoffs would begin.  The Victoria Cougars would play the Islanders while we would have home-ice advantage taking on the Westshore Wolves.  The North would see Nanaimo going against Saanich and Campbell River Storm squaring off against the Comox Valley Glacier Kings.  If a team in the South ends up last in the regular season they would be eliminated and the North and South would simply play the first rounds within their respective Divisions, 1vs 4 and 2 vs 3.  After the four winners are determined from the 1st Round they will be re-seeded based on total points during the regular season.  The 2nd Round will begin 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3, Divisions will not matter anymore.  The two winners of Round 2 will face-off in the VIJHL Championship series with all the marbles on the table.  All three rounds will be “Best of 7”.

There are three Junior “B” Leagues in British Columbia including the Kootenay International Junior League, Pacific Junior Hockey League in the Lower Mainland and the VIJHL here on the Island.  The three playoff winners travel to Nelson and are joined by the host in a 4-team Provincial Championship Tournament.  All teams will play a round robin facing each of the other three Clubs in Nelson for the weekend with the top two after the round robin going up against each other for the Gold and Silver medals, while the 3rd and 4th place teams battle it out for the Bronze.  It is an awesome format and some awesome hockey for the local fans and for fans making the trek out with their Clubs.

We are having a nice season and I am pretty confident that we will be in the 2nd and most important season, the playoffs.  But every game counts and we want to lock up a position in the standings that is somewhere close to the top, it will pay off in spades with home ice advantage when the puck drops for real come mid-February.

The first carding deadline is quickly upon us, December 1st and that has implications for Junior Rosters right across the Country.  There are a lot of rules around this date and next week I will get into them so you will understand what each team goes through, it is interesting.
Coreen is away tonight having a soda or two on a beach in Huatulco, Mexico with a girlfriend of 45 years.  But the curtain is set to rise here for our game tonight, thanks to all of you for your support!     Pete Zubersky