Groenheyde following his blueprint

By MARK HUNTER
Daily News Sports Reporter
Jon Groenheyde spent the summer working up a blueprint detailing how he wanted his second full WHL season to go.
Through one exhibition start, he’s right on track.
Groenheyde, an 18-year-old goaltender from Surrey, made 44 saves as the Kamloops Blazers beat the Vancouver Giants 3-2 on Saturday night in front of 736 fans at Interior Savings Centre. The Giants had beaten the Blazers 6-5 in a shootout in Ladner a night earlier.
“This is how I plan on playing the rest of the year,” said Groenheyde, who is hoping to share more time with starter Justin Leclerc this season. “From the start of camp, I (said) I trained to be the No. 1 guy and I’m here to be the No. 1 guy.”
Blazers head coach Barry Smith called out Groenheyde after a sub-par training camp, but the goalie appeared in midseason form Saturday, stopping 13 shots in each of the first two periods and 18 in the third period.
The two pucks the Giants got past Groenheyde could hardly be blamed on him.
He had no chance on the first, 10:57 into the first period, when Mike Piluso deftly tipped an Andrej Kudrna point shot past him.
Groenheyde’s chances of getting to the second goal — Craig Cunningham swatted in a rebound — with 54 seconds remaining were equally as limited.
But he made all the saves he could have, and kept his team in the game.
“Jonny was really good,” Smith said. “He was always waiting for shots to come . . . he was in good position. I would like to see him gather up his rebounds a little better, but I thought he had a really good night.”
The Blazers were outshot 14-7 in a disastrous first period, and gave Vancouver three power plays.
Smith must have read the Riot Act in the dressing room between the first and second periods — the Blazers came out and scored three times in the middle frame, with Jimmy Bubnick and Cole Grbavac, both on power plays, and Dylan Willick finding the back of the net.
“I barked at them a little after the first period, (saying) it’s our level we play at — we don’t wait for someone to warm up and then get your legs going,” Smith said. “I thought we did a better job in that second period of competing and taking it up a notch.”
“I was really happy with our first and third periods — I wasn’t happy with our second,” offered Giants head coach Don Hay. “I thought we backed off a little bit.
“You get what you deserve some times, and we didn’t deserve to win.”
Willick’s goal, a shorthanded score with 1:29 remaining in the second, was quite pretty. He took a perfect breakaway feed from Richard Vanderhoek and neatly slipped the puck through Vancouver goalie Jamie Tucker’s legs.
It was a nice way to cap a solid effort from Willick, a Prince George native who is among the 19 forwards fighting for spots on the team.
“It’s always good to know that there’s room for younger guys like myself,” said Willick, who turns 17 on Oct. 19. “I’ve just got to do what I can do to crack the roster of a very good team right now.”
Saturday’s game was a little tamer than Friday’s affair, in which there were three fights and Hay was ejected by referee Sean Raphael.
Hay was banging a stick on the boards trying to get Raphael’s attention.
“I got his attention, but it was in the wrong way,” said Hay, who could barely recall the last time he was kicked out of a game, but did know it was during his first season with the Blazers.
“It would have probably been my first year of coaching, in 1992-93,” he said. “It was a game in Spokane.
“It doesn’t happen very often, and I was really surprised it happened (Friday).”
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Six Blazers players were in Vancouver on Sunday to take a walkalong with police as part of Project: EDGE, which stands for educate, develop, grow and excel.
Defencemen Giffen Nyren, Josh Caron, Linden Saip and Zak Stebner, along with Bubnick and Leclerc, visited the Downtown Eastside to talk with addicts and dealers and learn about the struggles on the street.
During the season, the players will visit classrooms around Kamloops and share stories with children about the problems of drug abuse.
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JUST NOTES: The Blazers were 2-for-6 on the power play. . . . Vancouver was 1-for-5, with Piluso’s goal coming with the man advantage. . . . Tucker made 23 saves for the Giants. . . . The only fight of the night came at the 7:32 mark of the second period, between Kamloops F Brett Lyon and Vancouver D Brandon Scholten. . . . The Blazers are to play the Chilliwack Bruins in Hope on Wednesday night, before playing host to the Bruins on Friday. Game time is 7 p.m. at ISC.
mhunter@kamloopsnews.ca