Don’t look now, but the Cowichan Valley Capitals are third in the Coastal Conference of the sa国际传媒 Hockey League with a rocket, heights not seen since their promising 2019-20 season was suddenly halted by the pandemic on the verge of a conference final against the Nanaimo Clippers.
New head coach and GM Cam Keith has turned the Caps’ recent fortunes and the league is taking notice. Keith has the Capitals at 15-9-3. They were 16-34-4 last season, and a victory tonight will match their entire wins total from last season, before Christmas.
“Nobody is really surprised by this,” said Victoria Grizzlies head coach and GM Rylan Ferster on Thursday as he prepared his charges for tonight’s game at The Q Centre against the Capitals.
“Cam [Keith] has done a good job wherever he has been.”
The two faced-off in last season’s playoffs as Keith’s eventual Coastal Conference and BCHL champion Surrey Eagles defeated Ferster’s Grizzlies in a competitive six-game conference semifinal series.
Keith, as head coach and GM of Surrey last season, led the Eagles to the BCHL regular-season and playoff championships before losing to the Brooks Bandits in the cross-over series against the Alberta teams that have joined the BCHL.
Keith was hired by the Capitals as head coach and GM in June, bringing the 43-year-old native of Nelson back to the Island, where he played in the BCHL for the Victoria Salsa (now Grizzlies), on a team that included future NHL players Matt Pettinger and Greg Zanon.
He parlayed that into an NCAA Division 1 career at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and a well-travelled pro-hockey career in the AHL, ECHL and Germany, which included some pitched ECHL battles as a forward with the Alaska Aces against the arch-rival Victoria Salmon Kings.
“I have great memories of playing with the Salsa and all those match-ups with the Aces against the Salmon Kings,” Keith said when he was hired by the Capitals.
Keith also noted, at the time of his hiring by the Caps: “When I was playing in the BCHL, Cowichan Valley was an attractive program, but there have been some ups and downs. Now there is ownership in place [the five-person Island Capitals Sports and Entertainment Group, headed by John Dewar and including former NHL defenceman Clayton Stoner from Port McNeill], that is both hockey and community oriented.”
It is becoming one of the most intriguing projects in the BCHL. Included in the Capitals’ rise was the 4-0 victory over the Grizzlies (14-8-3) in the last meeting between the clubs in Duncan. That began a three-game losing streak for Victoria.
“We are in a bit of a slide. We dug ourselves in and we can dig ourselves out with a group that is committed and working hard,” said Ferster.
Offence remains an issue on the defensive-oriented Grizzlies squad.
“We haven’t scored five-on-five in our last three games and we have to start doing that,” said Ferster.
Tonight’s game will feature five players announced this week for the BCHL Top Prospects game Jan. 17 in Salmon Arm. It is for the best 2025 NHL draft-eligible players in the BCHL, plus 16 and 17-year-old prospects for the 2026 and 2027 NHL drafts.
Selections were made by the league coaches and GMs. Players ranked by Central Scouting received automatic selection.
Forwards Chase Pirtle, committed to the NCAA Div. 1 Cornell Big Red, and Tobias Pitka, committed to NCAA Div. 1 Boston College and currently in the Slovakian team camp for the 2025 world junior championship in Ottawa, and NCAA Ivy League Princeton committed defenceman Daniel D’Alessandro are the Grizzlies players selected for the Top Prospects game.
“It is great recognition for our players and our program,” said Ferster.
“The individual recognition is great but these are team-first guys.”
Selected from the Capitals are forward Hayden Russell and NCAA Army-committed blue-liner Camden Charron. Other players selected from Island teams include Andrew Brown, Chase Hull and Joel Plante from the Nanaimo Clippers (10-13-2), and defenceman Caden Tremblay and NCAA Dartmouth-bound forward Wyatt Blace from the Coastal Conference second-place Alberni Valley Bulldogs (16-8-1).
Alberni Valley and the Clippers meet tonight at Frank Crane Arena in Nanaimo.
The Grizzlies are in Nanaimo on Saturday night to play the Clippers while Keith and the Capitals head over the Hump to meet the Bulldogs in Port Alberni.
