The bruising Red Deer Rebels had little trouble in extending to 11 games their club-record winning streak to start the Western Hockey League season by dismissing the visiting Victoria Royals 6-2 on Wednesday night before 2,757 fans at the Peavey Mart Centrium.
Rebels head coach and former NHLer Steve Konowalchuk, who guided the Seattle Thunderbirds to the 2016-17 WHL championship, seems to be on to something in Red Deer as well in his first season with the Rebels. Konowalchuk’s squad, captained by New York Rangers third-round draft pick Jayden Grubbe, has surpassed the previous club record of seven victories to start a season. That 2000-01 Red Deer team went on to win the Memorial Cup national championship, if that’s any harbinger.
“The Rebels are a really good team that is physical and structured,” said Victoria GM and head coach Dan Price.
“I have challenged our players to be more physical. That was the biggest difference tonight and led to Red Deer having the majority of possession and chances.”
The game was the first of a six-game road swing through the Central Division of the Eastern Conference, the Royals’ first since before the pandemic. The Royals (2-9-2) are in Swift Current to play the Broncos (3-7) on Friday night and in Medicine Hat to meet the Tigers (4-5-1) on Saturday.
“We need to get back to physicality and we have to bounce back strongly after this game and make sure we respond in Swift Current by being gritty, tenacious and driving the play,” said Price.
That is everything Victoria wasn’t on Wednesday night in Red Deer. Teague Patton’s fourth goal of the season made it 2-1 on the power play in the first period but that’s as good as it got for the overmatched visitors. Reggie Newman, also on the power play, got his third goal of the season in garbage time at 18:19 of the third period. Royals blue-liner Kalem Parker, who represented sa国际传媒 in the 2022 IIHF world championship in Germany and is ranked by Central Scouting for the fourth-to-sixth rounds of the 2023 NHL draft, assisted on both Victoria goals.
Notable for the Royals were the WHL career debuts of Cole Reschny, the touted forward and third-overall pick in this year’s WHL prospects draft who earned his first league point with an assist, and six-foot-two 17-year-old goaltender Logan Cunningham, who tentatively began staking his claim as the Victoria goaltender of the future by stopping all four shots he faced in his first WHL crease appearance in replacing veteran Victoria starter Tyler Palmer late in the game after Palmer faced 27 shots.
As they have done most of the season, which is telling, the Royals faced the opposing team’s back-up goaltender. Former BCHL Victoria Grizzlies goalie Kyle Kelsey is 8-0 with a 1.87 goals-against average and .936 save percentage for Red Deer. But it was Rhett Stoesser who got the call for the Rebels on this night as he earned his third victory on the season by making just 13 saves.
The Rebels were without injured Ben King, a fourth-round NHL draft selection of the Anaheim Ducks, who scored a league-leading 52 goals last season. But Red Deer barely missed him, or a beat, in dominating the Royals. Also missing for the Rebels was rookie forward Ollie Josephson from Victoria, the fifth overall section in the 2021 WHL prospects draft, who is with Hockey sa国际传媒 preparing for the World U-17 Challenge.
