Groenheyde gets the call

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
Jon Groenheyde smiled at the memory. It is one he hopes to relive tonight.
Groenheyde made the first start of his WHL career on Jan. 4, stopping 33
shots and sparking the Kamloops Blazers to a 3-2 victory over the Tri-City
Americans.
“I just went out and played . . . I was a bit nervous,” Groenheyde said
Monday after practice at Interior Savings Centre. “After the first coouple
of shots I realized it was just another game . . . I was 16 and I felt I
played a good game and now I’ll have to live up to what I played like last
season.”
The Americans are back in town tonight and, yes, the 17-year-old native of
Surrey will make his fourth career start.
He goes in with a 1-2 record, a 3.92 GAA and a .878 save percentage. With
Groenheyde in goal, the Blazers beat the Vancouver Giants 4-3 in a shootout
and lost 6-2 to the Spokane Chiefs and 3-2 to the Prince Albert Raiders.
“I don’t feel like I’ve played any really bad games,” Groenheyde said. “I
feel good in there and that’s the main thing.”
Looking back at each of his starts, he added: “I was fighting the puck the
first game . . . for the first few shots and then I felt really good near
the end. Spokane was a tough game. They’re very skilled and I had a tough
game. The last game, against P.A., we just didn’t get the breaks we needed.”
The Blazers are in need of a break or two. They have lost their last four
games and eight of their last 10. In fact, if you go back to last season,
they have dropped 27 of their last 32 meaningful games. They have fallen
from 16th to 19th in the WMJHWA’s latest poll (see Scoreboard).
The most important thing, then, is for the players to stay positive.
“It’s a challenge,” Groenheyde admitted, “but it’s all about working through
adversity.”
“If you drag yourself down, it isn’t going to get any better,” added
Kamloops head coach Barry Smith, who said his team needs to get back to
being a “simple, boring hockey team.”
“I told the guys, if we look at the four games we lost, two of them we
played pretty well,” Smith said. “We talked about the little things. We
don’t have to make drastic changes. We have to get back to what we did in
the preseason . . . we were a simple, boring hockey team.”
The Blazers went 5-1 in the exhibition season and then won two of their
first three regular-season games. That, however, was a month ago and things
have changed.
Smith hopes to get back to basics tonight by rolling four lines.
“That’s where we were succesful early in the season,” he explained. “We had
four lines going. We want to get back to that. Roll four where we don’t have
to worry about matchups. Get our work ethic going again.”
The one thing he won’t do is allow himself to be anything but positive.
“I don’t let myself get down and I think it starts up top with the coaching
staff,” he said. “Am I going to be mad or upset? Yeah. But the next day we
have to go again. We can’t do anything about those four games. If I could,
we would go back and do something. We can’t.”
The one part of his team’s game that has held up, Smith said, is
goaltending.
Despite the fact his club has given up 53 goals — only the Edmonton Oil
Kings have allowed more (63) — Smith said he has “been happy” with the play
of veteran goaltender Justin Leclerc, who has started 10 games.
“He’s made some big saves. He hasn’t had a lot of help in front of him,”
Smith said of Leclerc, who practised yesterday despite feeling a bit under
the weather. “I thought he’s been good and we’ll give him a breather.”
JUST NOTES: Former Blazers D Tyler Sloan has been recalled by the NHL’s
Washingon Capitals and is expected to play tonight in Calgary against the
Flames. Sloan, who is from Calgary, had been with the AHL’s Hershey Bears.
In fact, his father, Fred, had driven to Hershey to watch his son play there
only to learn his son was going the other way. “I didn’t think it was going
to be this soon, but I’m ecstatic,” Tyler told the Washington Post. “I’m
going to Calgary, my hometown . . . you can’t ask for any more than that.”

gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
gdrinnan.blogspot.com