A 3-2 victory over the visiting Powell River Kings at the Island Savings Centre on Friday night lifted the Cowichan Valley Capitals into double digits in wins in what has been a long, challenging season.
The Caps earned a split on their final weekend of the B.C. Hockey League campaign, following up the win over Powell River with a 5-4 loss to the Surrey Eagles the next night.
“That was important,” Capitals head coach Brian Passmore said of the 10th win. “We wanted to win both. We had a really good game on Friday night, against a team looking to move into first place. It was a solid hockey game that came right down to the end.”
The Caps went up 2-0 in the first period on Friday on powerplay goals by Jonathan Stein and Ty Pochipinski. After a scoreless middle frame, the Kings got on the board with a powerplay goal in the third. Stein managed to restore Cowichan’s two-goal lead before Powell River scored another powerplay marker with less than two minutes to play. Mike Corson made 37 saves to earn the win as the Caps were outshot 39-27.
Saturday night’s game marked the 18th time this season that the Caps have lost either by one goal, or two including empty-netters.
“The guys wanted to play a more wide-open game,” Passmore said. “We didn’t play well enough to win in the end.”
Brendan Cherwalk scored exactly one minute into the game, and Surrey tied the score with exactly two minutes left in the first period. Hugh Larkin made it 2-1 with a powerplay goal at 2:59 of the second, but Surrey answered back with goals at 4:07 and 4:54 to pull ahead. The teams swapped goals in the third, with Stein and Cherwalk scoring for the Caps, but Cowichan wasn’t able to close the gap. Defencemen Simon Chen and Marshall Skapski each had two assists, and Corson made 28 stops as the Caps outshot Surrey 35-33.
Providing some inspiration for the Caps in their 58th and final game of the season were blueliners Andrew McCann and Boo Grist. McCann skated in a game for the first time since Feb. 10, playing hurt in the last game of his junior hockey career. Grist, meanwhile, dressed for the first time since he broke his hand on Jan. 14, and sat on the bench for 60 minutes, providing moral support even as a cast prevented him from taking the ice.
“That shows the kind of teammate he is,” Passmore said. “That’s quite a thing to do. He’s such a good team guy. Guys like that are what we want to see next year.”
That also shows the kind of season the Caps have had. The team didn’t play a game with six regular defencemen since Nov. 5, a span of 38 games. They hit a low on Feb. 11 when Skapski was the only regular blueliner to suit up, joined in the lineup by two APs. For seven games between Feb. 9 and Feb. 23, they had only three defencemen, regular or AP, in the lineup.
That ends up being a problem even outside of game situations, Passmore pointed out.
“Even just going out for practice, you can’t do a lot of drills because there are only three or four D out there,” he said.
The Caps started the season with seven healthy defencemen, but that number dwindled quickly. Veteran Nii Noi Tetteh lasted just eight games before a concussion ended his season. Alexandre Drapeau was sent back to Quebec in early November. Riley Thorpe asked for a trade in late November. Yuri Davis-Martel suffered a concussion in early January. Grist was sidelined soon after that with the aforementioned broken hand. Chen and McCann each missed a handful of games, leaving Skapski as the only defender to appear in every game, sometimes playing well over 30 minutes.
When the Caps tried to find reinforcements, that didn’t work out either. They acquired the rights to Domenic Masellis from Surrey at the Jan. 10 trade deadline, but he reportedly opted to throw his skates in the ocean rather than join the Caps.
Among the forwards who spent the most time filling in on defence was rookie and Cowichan Valley product Caleb Franklin.
“He did a great job, better than I expected,” Passmore said.
It’s not an easy transition for forwards to move to the blueline at the junior A level. Neither is it easy for junior B defencemen to make the jump to junior A for the occasional game, where the opponents are “stronger, smarter and more dedicated to the game” than those who they usually face.
The Caps used six AP defencemen this season, including 17-year-old Brady Morrison, who became a fixture once his junior B team, the Port Moody Panthers, were eliminated from their playoffs, and ended up getting into 17 games.
“He came in and got better and better,” Passmore said, noting that Morrison has been invited to main camp in late summer where he will have an opportunity to earn a spot on next year’s team.
The goaltending situation, although it stabilized down the stretch, hurt the team as well as they used up five cards on two positions. The team started the season with Adam Marcoux and Yann Dery, but traded Dery to Quebec when Marcoux emerged as the clear starter. That backfired when Marcoux asked for a trade. The Caps added Caiden Kreitz in the trade that sent Thorpe to Calgary, but he attended one practice before leaving the Caps, eventually resurfacing in junior B.
In the end, the Caps got strong play from Corson, who they found in the Northern Ontario junior A league, and J.J. Pichette, who started the season with the junior B Kerry Park Islanders after impressing at Cowichan’s training camp.
The lineup and roster fluctuations, whether due to injuries, inconsistency or discontent, were one of the biggest obstacles the Capitals faced this season.
“It was a challenge every day to deal with it,” Passmore said. “The guys who were here at the end of the year worked hard. We didn’t have much depth at the end, or luck. After all the setbacks we had, the guys were frustrated, but they never gave up.
“I wouldn’t say it was the most tight-knit group. They didn’t get along as good as we would have liked. But they stuck together through the end of the year, and played hard, and there were some good things.”
Last weekend marked the final appearances with the Caps for 20-year-olds Tate Coughlin, Troy MacTavish, Simon Chen and Andrew McCann, and for 19-year-old Ty Pochipinski who is off to play for Colorado College. That group includes the team’s top four scorers, but the team won’t be starting from scratch next year.
Only three players from this year’s team — Skapski, Tetteh and Cherwalk — are eligible to return as 20-year-olds next year, so there will be lots of room for veterans as other teams jettison their older players to fit roster requirements, and Passmore wants to make the most of that.
“We are more or less looking to bring in 20-year-olds who are looking for a scholarship, who have interest or who are already committed,” he said.
Other eligible returnees for next year include Ethan Scardina, Azzaro Tinling, David Laroche and Nick Wilson, who will be looking to make big jumps statistically, as Pochipinski did from his 2016-17 rookie season to this year.
Passmore is also thinking of other changes he wants to make next season, starting with training camp in August.
“We want a smaller main camp so the guys gel more quickly and get into more exhibition games,” he said.
Looking in that direction, the Caps have already started recruiting, something they can now pour more into than the other 16 teams, who have playoffs to concentrate on. Anything to improve on the year that is now in the rear-view mirror.
“We want to make sure,” Passmore said, “that this doesn’t happen again next year.”
