Blazers-Giants notebook: Lyon loves to stir pot against ex-teammates

By MARK HUNTER
Daily News Sports Reporter
VANCOUVER — Brett Lyon enjoys playing against his former team, but he especially loves stirring it up with his former teammates.
Lyon, a forward with the Vancouver Giants, is doing battle in a WHL playoff series with the Kamloops Blazers, the very team that traded the Grand Forks native on Nov. 23. Kamloops received 20-year-old defenceman Ryan Funk in return for Lyon, who turned 19 on Jan. 23.
Since the trade, the Blazers and Giants have met six times, and Lyon has done his best to renew old acquaintances each time. He has fought three of his former teammates, four if you count a brouhaha with Ryan Hanes during a March 5 line brawl.
“That’s just the way it’s happened,” said Lyon, who ended the season with 11 points, all but four of them with the Giants. “I’m not sure that it’s because I played there before, but it always seems to happen.”
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Lyon was quiet in his first Giants-Blazers game after the trade, going minus-1 in a 5-3 home victory on Dec. 11. The next night, in Kamloops, he made his presence felt, scrapping with Blazers defenceman Linden Saip 22 seconds into a 5-4 shootout victory and picking up seven penalty minutes.
“We were good friends,” Lyon said. “The beginning of the game, we set it up, set the tone. We dropped the gloves, but it wasn’t any big thing — that’s hockey.”
After a plus-one performance in a 6-3 victory at home on Dec. 28, Lyon got down and dirty in a 2-1 road shootout victory on Jan. 29, dropping the mitts with defenceman Josh Caron.
On March 5, when the Blazers pounded the visiting Giants, 6-1, Lyon was right in the middle of a line brawl, tussling with Hanes. Lyon wasn’t assessed a fighting major on the play, but received a double minor for roughing and a misconduct, and ended the game with 16 PIM.
For good measure, Lyon got into a scrap with defenceman Brandon Underwood in Vancouver’s 6-5 home shootout victory on Saturday.
Lyon ended the season with 198 PIM, second in the league and only five back of Portland Winterhawks forward Brad Ross and eight ahead of Caron.
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Lyon said there’s still a bit of novelty in playing the Blazers, with whom he played 58 games over parts of two seasons.
”It’s pretty much any other game,” said Lyon, who goes 6-foot-2 and 185 pounds. “Maybe I want to win a little more considering that I used to play there and I know the guys.
“You have to put that aside, especially at playoff time.”
Lyon ended up scoring one goal and adding six assists during his time with the Blazers, and also compiled 115 PIM. In his 44 games with Vancouver, Lyon picked up 135 PIM.
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The Giants are only three years removed from their Memorial Cup victory, but only three players remain off that championship squad.
Forwards Lance Bouma, Craig Cunningham and James Wright all played for the Giants team that won the Memorial Cup in Vancouver in May 2007.
All three players, who were born in 1990, were completing their first full seasons of junior. Wright was the only player of the three to score a goal in the tournament, finding the twine twice in a span of 38 seconds during the third period of an 8-1 semifinal victory over the OHL-champion Plymouth Whalers.
Nolan Toigo, now a 20-year-old defenceman, played 33 games for the Giants during the 2006-07 regular season, but did not dress for any playoff or Memorial Cup games.
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Entering this postseason, the Blazers had gone to overtime once in their last two trips to the playoffs, a change of pace from their previous four appearances.
Kamloops, which entered last night’s game having lost 15 straight playoff games dating back to March 29, 2005, lost 3-2 in overtime to the visiting Kelowna Rockets on March 24, 2009. It is the only OT game in Kamloops’ last two playoff series — the Blazers were swept by the Rockets and by the Tri-City Americans the year before that.
But leading into 2007-08, Kamloops had gone to overtime in 10 of 21 previous playoff games, including three of four against the Prince George Cougars in 2007, all of which the Blazers lost.
Before missing the postseason in 2006, Kamloops went to extra time three of six times against the Kootenay Ice in 2005, once in five games against the Giants in 2004, and three of six games against Kootenay in 2003.
The last time the Blazers won a playoff game in overtime was March 25, 2005, when Terrance Delaronde’s winner and Devan Dubnyk’s 33 saves led Kamloops to a 4-3 victory over the Ice in Game 1 in Cranbrook.
mhunter@kamloopsnews.ca