Thursday was a day for savouring Scotty.
And the Victoria Royals didn鈥檛 have to be beamed up to do it.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a great achievement and is not easy to do,鈥� said Victoria Royals GM Cam Hope, following his club clinching the Scotty Munro Trophy for the 2015-16 WHL regular-season championship with a 7-4 win in Kelowna the night before.
鈥淭his is a nice reward for a group of players who decided at about mid-season that this was something they wanted to do and that it was attainable.鈥�
That it was, as the Royals went a torrid 24-1-2 over the final stretch of the season to capture the first Scotty Munro Trophy in the 10-season history of the Chilliwack Bruins/Victoria Royals franchise. It was the first Scotty Munro Trophy for the city since the 1980-81 Victoria Cougars and third overall for Victoria, along with the 1974-75 Cougars.
That鈥檚 a heady accomplishment, but now this is a group that needs to stay focused heading into the final two regular-season games against the Silvertips (38-24-8) tonight in Everett, Washington, and the return engagement against the Silvertips on Saturday at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
鈥淥urs is a team that knows how to keep it in perspective,鈥� said Hope.
鈥淭he most important thing about winning the regular season is that it affords you certain advantages to help you get to your ultimate goal.鈥�
The biggest of which is that it guarantees home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs, beginning March 25 and 26 when the Royals open the first round against the Western Conference eighth seed. That will likely be either the Spokane Chiefs or Portland Winterhawks. They are both tied with 73 points but the Winterhawks have three games remaining and the Chiefs two. The ninth-place Tri-City Americans still have a mathematical chance but it鈥檚 a longshot and would require Tri-City to win its final two games and either Spokane or Portland to lose out.
鈥淏oth Spokane and Portland are good teams that have given us a tough time,鈥� said Hope, of the most likely opening post-season opponents.
If Victoria advances to the second round, it would play the winner of an increasingly likely first-round matchup between Kelowna and Kamloops.
Only three of the last 12 WHL regular-season champions have gone on to win the Ed Chynoweth Cup as league playoff champions. Victoria hopes to overcome that recent trend. The Royals have built their season on relentless speed and pressure. They are always attacking, on defence and offence, and in all zones.
鈥淲e are all about speed 鈥� get the turnover and get back into the offensive zone as fast as possible,鈥� said Victoria forward Regan Nagy.
Fellow Royals forward Ryan Peckford concurred.
鈥淲e play our systems and we play our roles. We鈥檝e all bought into it,鈥� said the rookie.
Victoria has also remained remarkably healthy this season and that certainly helped its cause.
The curtain-dropping Victoria-Everett matchup tonight and Saturday will feature the top three goalies in the WHL, based on goals-against average. Rookie Griffen Outhouse of Victoria leads the league with a 1.84 GAA. Carter Hart of the Silvertips, the top-ranked North American goalie for the 2016 NHL draft, is second with a 2.14 GAA. Royals veteran Coleman Vollrath is third with a 2.40 GAA. It doesn鈥檛 hurt either the Royals or Silvertips to be heading into the post-season with that sort of goaltending.
Despite having clinched the league, the final games are not entirely meaningless for Victoria because of record chases. The Royals (48-16-6) need one more win to break the Bruins/Royals franchise record of 48 victories, with which they are tied. One more victory will also set a new franchise record for consecutive wins at 12.
Meanwhile, if Victoria wins its final two games against Everett, it will finish with 106 points, which will still be the lowest total for a Scotty Munro Trophy-winning team since the 2005-06 Medicine Hat Tigers.
