VICTORIA 6
TRI-CITY 2
This time the Victoria Royals got the complete job done.
Securing a 2-0 lead by the 11:13 mark of the first period, the Western Hockey League club managed to easily hang on for a 6-2 win over the visiting Tri-City Americans at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre on Wednesday.
Unlike the previous night in which they blew 2-0 and 3-1 leads in a 4-3 shootout defeat.
The victory snaps a three-game winless streak and they now move on to Prince George for an important two-game set starting Friday where they will have head coach Dave Lowry back from the world juniors, along with defenceman Joe Hicketts, who was in the building Wednesday but did not play.
鈥淭he big thing for us was it was almost the identical situation that we were in [Tuesday]. We learned from what happened and I was proud of the way everything went,鈥� said interim head coach Enio Sacilotto, who had witnessed four losses in the last five games. 鈥淲e came out strong.鈥�
Alex Forsberg had a hat-trick (including two on the power play) on the one-year anniversary of his arrival to Victoria and Tyler Soy had a goal and two assists as Victoria opened the same lead they had on Tuesday.
This time they upped it to 4-0 before Tri-City got on the board in the second period. When the Americans cut it to 4-1 on a Nolan Yaremko goal, Forsberg got it right back on his second on a man-advantage, something they didn鈥檛 do in key times in Game 1 of the matchup.
鈥淭he power play was working really well tonight. We worked the puck around well and created a lot of opportunities,鈥� said Sacilotto.
Logan Fisher and Jack Walker also scored for the Royals, who improve to 24-14-1-3 in second place in the West. Tri-City falls to 17-21-2-0. Morgan Geekie had the other Americans鈥� goal.
鈥淚 really didn鈥檛 have to do too much on those power-play goals. I just kind of tapped them in and that was evidence that we were moving it around well,鈥� said Forsberg, who now has 17 goals.
The important part was they kept the foot on the gas.
鈥淲e weren鈥檛 happy with our second period the last game. We got up two goals again and didn鈥檛 want to make the same mistake twice so we shut it down in the second period,鈥� said Forsberg.
Griffen Outhouse made his second straight start in goal for the hosts and faced a total of 40 shots after having just four in the opening 20 minutes. Evan Sarthou started for Tri-City, but came out in favour of backup Nicholas Sanders after the second goal 11:13 in.
Meanwhile, the Prince George Cougars won 4-3 in Kamloops in a shootout on Wednesday and remain two points back with two games in hand on Victoria.
CROWN JEWELS: defencemen Ryan Gagnon and Marcel Ibragimov were both plus-3 on the night for Victoria and Dante Hannoun returned to the lineup after sitting out Tuesday. 鈥� Tri-City鈥檚 Mike Williamson coached his 1,000th regular-season WHL game and was recognized by the Royals during a first-period break. He becomes just the seventh head man to reach that mark.
