Every player wants to be the guy who scores the goal on Teddy Bear Toss night, the junior-hockey tradition in which the first tally by the home team triggers an avalanche to the ice of stuffed toy animals for charity.
The visiting Tri-City Americans will want to delay that moment for the Victoria Royals as long as possible tonight at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre. They are not Grinches, but they are here to win a Western Hockey League game, which is the whole point of sports at this level. The Americans, who missed the playoffs last season, have been doing a fairly good job of that in a rebound campaign in which they are 14-14 overall and a hottish 7-3 over the last 10 games.
A big part of that has been because of Campbell River-product and Americans assistant-captain Parker Bell. The six-foot-four winger and former Vancouver Island Junior Hockey League Campbell River Storm player has the size and prototype pro-skating stride and was selected in the fifth round of the 2022 NHL draft by the Calgary Flames. The 19-year-old has 11 goals and 17 assists for 28 points in 26 games – including a goal and assist Wednesday in being named second star in a loss in Everett — as he returns to the Island for games tonight and Saturday night against the Royals.
It also hasn’t hurt the Americans’ fortunes to have the talented and mobile six-foot-two blueliner Lukas Dragicevic on the roster. The native of Richmond is ranked for the first round of the 2023 NHL draft and played for sa国际传媒, alongside Royals Brayden Schuurman and Kalem Parker, in the 2022 IIHF world U-18 championship in Germany. Dragicevic, according to the Tri-City website, is on a 22-game points streak, eclipsing Victoria NHL-product and former Kelowna Rockets blueliner Tyson Barrie for the longest points streak by a WHL defenceman since 2009. Victoria and Tri-City were the two teams that missed the playoffs in the WHL Western Conference last season, which is the reason Dragicevic, Schuurman and Parker were available for Canadian team duty at the Under-18 worlds early last spring.
While Tri-City has rallied this season and currently sits in a playoff spot in seventh place, the Royals are still struggling and occupy 10th and last place in the Western Conference at 5-23-3 and are 12 points adrift of a playoff position while having played four more games than eighth-place Kelowna.
The Royals get a bit of a break this weekend with two Tri-City players, goaltender Tomas Suchanek and forward Adam Mechura, away on national-team duty with Czechia for the IIHF 2023 world junior championship tournament beginning on Boxing Day in Moncton, N.B., and Halifax, N.S.
From the Teddy Bear Toss to feeling the gnawing pressure of having to turn things around, and quickly, there’s a lot on the minds of the Royals.
“We have to stay focused on the process,” said Victoria GM and head coach Dan Price, following a loss Wednesday night at the Memorial Centre, against the Vancouver Giants.
The games against the Americans this weekend are the final two for the Royals before the Christmas break. Victoria will return from the break to face the Giants three consecutive times in the cross-strait rivalry Dec. 27-28 at the Langley Events Centre and Dec. 30 at the Memorial Centre.
ICE CHIPS: Two former Royals, forward Jared Dmytriw from the University Saskatchewan Huskies and defenceman Scott Walford from McGill, have been selected to represent sa国际传媒 in the 2023 Winter World University Games next month in Lake Placid, New York.
