Blazers faced with Giant task

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
While the Kamloops Blazers have spent the past 10 WHL seasons struggling to get out of the first round of the playoffs, the Vancouver Giants have won 55 postseason games and been to a pair of Memorial Cup tournaments.
Those two teams, with such disparate recent histories, will open a best-of-seven WHL playoff series in Vancouver with games on Friday and Saturday. The series will return to Kamloops for Games 3 and 4 on March 23 and 24.
In their eight seasons of existence, the Giants have gone 55-33 in the WHL playoffs. They failed to qualify in their first season (2001-02), won the WHL title in 2005-06 and won the Memorial Cup, as the host team, in 2006-07.
The Blazers, meanwhile, have gone 5-36 in failing to advance past the first round since reaching the WHL championship final in 1998-99, where they lost to the Calgary Hitmen in five games. Nine times since then the Blazers have qualified for the playoffs — they didn’t make it in 2005-06 — and nine times it has been one and done.
That includes 2003-04 when the Giants, whose coaching staff included Craig Bonner, took out the Blazers in five games.
Bonner now is completing his second season as the Blazers’ general manager, one of four former Giants now with Kamloops. The others ex-Giants are defencemen Ryan Funk, the team captain, Bronson Maschmeyer and Linden Saip. Kamloops trainer Colin Robinson also is a former Vancouver employee.
Bonner’s brother, Scott, is the Giants’ general manager, and their father, Terry, scouts for the Giants. And, of course, Vancouver head coach Don Hay is from Kamloops and is a former Blazers assistant and head coach.
“Family feud” is how a laughing Kamloops head coach Guy Charron described it. “Mom has more of a decision to make than anyone.”
Charron then retreated into playoff mode and added: “It should be a very exciting series. They’re a good team, they finished first (in the B.C. Division) and I think our kids are going to battle very hard.”
The matchup was set up Saturday night when the Giants outshot the Blazers 55-22 and beat them 6-5 in a shootout before 14,468 fans at Pacific Coliseum.
The Giants (41-25-3-3), as B.C. Division winners, are the conference’s No. 2 seed. The Blazers (32-33-2-5) wound up tied with the Chilliwack Bruins (32-33-2-5), who lost 5-0 to the Silvertips in Everett on Saturday.
The WHL’s first tiebreaker is regular-season victories, and the Blazers and Bruins each had 32. The next tiebreaker was games between the two teams, with the Blazers holding a 5-3-0-0 edge.
Thus, the Blazers drew the Giants, while the Bruins got the Tri-City Americans, who topped the Western Conference and the U.S. Division.
There were some positive signs for the Blazers, besides the goaltending of Kurtis Mucha, although one shouldn’t read too much into the shots on goal totals that most WHL teams will tell you seem to be inflated in Vancouver.
Forwards Dalibor Bortnak and Colin Smith, each of whom had gone eight games without scoring, both found the range, while centre C.J. Stretch continued to put up points, getting his 30th goal and adding two assists.
The Giants scored three times in the shootout as they beat the Blazers for the sixth time in eight meetings. Vancouver will say it won the season series 6-1-0-1. However, it won once in overtime and three times in a shootout, meaning the Blazers were 2-2-1-3 in the series.
Defenceman Kevin Connauton and forwards Craig Cunningham and James Henry scored in the shootout, while Stretch was able to beat Vancouver goaltender Mark Segal, who gave up five goals on 22 shots through OT.
Connauton and James Wright each finished with a goal and two assists for the Giants, who got their other goals from Brett Breitkreuz, J.T. Barnett and Milan Kytnar.
Saip forced OT at 16:28 of the third period. Brendan Ranford also scored for Kamloops.
At two hours 49 minutes, this was the second-longest game of the Blazers’ season, behind the 2:52 it took to play a Dec. 12 game in Kamloops as the home team beat the Giants 5-4 in a shootout.
JUST NOTES: There wasn’t anything official as of last night but there is plenty of speculation that Shaw TV will televise the Vancouverr-Kamloops series in its entirety. . . . Blazers D Brandon Underwood was to have a hand X-rayed following a scrap with former Kamloops teammate Brett Lyon. Underwood did skate during Sunday’s optional practice. . . . The Blazers scratched F Jake Trask, who has gone 13 games without a point and has just one goal in his last 25 outings. . . . Among the Giants’ scratches were F Tomas Vincour (ill) and F Lance Bouma (knee). Bouma, the captain, missed his club’s last 14 games. They hope to have him back at some point in the first round. . . . Kamloops C Mark Hall had his four-game goal-scoring streak snapped in Friday’s 5-1 loss to the visiting Prince George Cougars. He had gone 34 games without a goal when the streak began. . . . Only Ranford and Maschmeyer played in all 72 of the Blazers’ regular-season games. . . . According to announced attendance figures, the Blazers drew 157,197 fans to their 36 home games, an average of 4,367. In 2006-07, the last season under the ownership of the Kamloops Blazers Sports Society, the average attendance was 4,787. In 2007-08, under private ownership, that figure was 4,564. Last season, it was 4,375. . . . According to the WHL Guide, Interior Saving Centre seats 5,464, with standing room at 500.

gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
gdrinnan.blogspot.com