Too fast, too big, too good. Basically, too everything.
The Seattle Thunderbirds are all that with 10 NHL draft picks, including five first-rounders, and another five players ranked for this year’s NHL draft. The Thunderbirds are on another planet than most Western Hockey League teams, and in another solar system entirely, than also-rans like the Victoria Royals.
The Thunderbirds (42-9-2), ranked No. 3 in the Canadian Hockey League top-10 poll, humbled the Royals 7-0 to hush a Family Day matinee crowd of 4,313 on Monday afternoon at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre. That followed an 8-1 Thunderbirds victory over the Royals (15-35-6) on Saturday night in Kent, Washington. Including a 3-0 win in December, the Thunderbirds have outscored Victoria 18-1 in three games. The Royals have worked hard in all those contests but are so over-matched that it simply doesn’t seem to matter or make a dent. Victoria will try to salvage something out of the one-sided series when the Royals and Thunderbirds conclude their four-game season engagement tonight in the Memorial Centre.
“On paper, this is one of the best teams ever in this league,” said Seattle defenceman and NHL-signed Nashville Predators-prospect Luke Prokop.
“But it’s important not to take anything for granted. This team is built for the playoffs and now must build for that down the stretch drive of the regular season.”
With several elite mid- or late-season acquisitions, the Thunderbirds do not want to squander the remaining regular-season opportunities to jell. Dylan Guenther scored Monday and has four goals and nine points in six games since being sent down to junior from the Arizona Coyotes of the NHL after the Thunderbirds secured his WHL rights from the Edmonton Oil Kings. Chicago Blackhawks prospect Colton Dach, the former Kelowna captain acquired from the Rockets at the trade deadline, also scored against Victoria on Monday and has four points in the two games since joining the Thunderbirds from injury. Former Prince Albert captain Nolan Allan was acquired from the Raiders in November. Guenther, Dach and Allan are all world junior gold medallists with sa国际传媒.
The Thunderbirds gave up a ferry-load of future WHL draft picks to build this roster and they know their time is now. This season is to be followed by a looming long rebuild.
“We have worked very hard to put ourselves in this position and [general-manager Bil La Forge] has made some great moves to gain for us even more roster experience,” said Seattle head coach Matt O’Dette.
“Now it’s a matter of building chemistry and comradery within the group and piecing together the lines that work best and also the over-all composition of the group. For us, it’s about using the remaining regular season games to come together as a unit.”
The Royals would be hard pressed to answer that the Thunderbirds haven’t come together already.
Thomas Milic, who backstopped sa国际传媒 to the 2023 world junior championship gold medal in Halifax, has recorded the two shutouts against Victoria and has yet to be scored on by the Royals in six periods this season. (Seattle back-up Scott Ratzlaff played the 8-1 victory Saturday against Victoria).
“We’ve got to get in front of Milic’s eyes,” said Royals assistant captain Riley Gannon.
“They [T-Birds] capitalized on their chances and we have to capitalize on ours, too,”
The Kelowna Rockets beat the Tri-City Americans 3-1 Monday. That means Victoria, with only 12 games remaining, fell seven points behind Kelowna in the battle for the eighth and final playoff position in the Western Conference with the Rockets holding three games in hand. The math is dire, and closing in quickly on Victoria, but GM and head coach Dan Price remained optimistic.
“We previously closed a 12-point deficit on Kelowna to one point and I know we can do this,” he said.
But three consecutive Royals losses, combined with three consecutive Rockets wins, have made that a daunting task for Victoria.
“We focus on ourselves, not where Kelowna is,” said Gannon.
But the fact is, in terms of where the numbers are at, it is out of Victoria’s hands and the final playoff berth is the Rockets’ to lose. But it might not be a prize at all, with either the Rockets or Royals to meet the Thunderbirds in the first round of the playoffs, with every WHL pundit likely to predict a four-game sweep.
ICE CHIPS: Seattle bench-boss O’Dette knows the Memorial Centre well and skated against the Victoria Salmon Kings for six seasons as a pro player for the Fresno Falcons and Stockton Thunder of the ECHL. “Those were great days and this was always a fun building to play in because the Salmon Kings had great fans,” recalled O’Dette.
