The Kings are back on the road and will look to get back into the win column during this 3-in-3 road trip, beginning with the Merritt Centennials. It will the the Kings first venture into the Interior Conference this season. After two consecutive losses, the Kings should come out swinging this weekend, here’s the rundown:
What’s What for the Kings:
After a poor weekend in which the defence and goaltending let in too many and the forwards didn’t score enough, the team has been hard at work in practice this week fixing what went wrong over the weekend. Both Sean Maguire and Jamie Phillips played over the weekend, and while both made key saves, neither were where they expect to be I don’t think. A defence that had been rock solid and only allowed 7 goals in 6 goals was opened up for 9 in 120 minutes of hockey. And while 3-goals can win you hockey games, in this league it likely won’t on more nights than not. The Kings had regularly been scoring 4+ and that final blow simply wasn’t there this weekend.
With all the doom and gloom, there are positives. The powerplay was much better on the weekend, with Craig Dalrymple netting two on Saturday and Jon Jutzi blasting home one on the man advantage last Friday. It is starting to turn around and generating many more chances, both up high on the point and down low. The Kings are still scoring short handed, as evidenced by Dan Schuler on the weekend, and the 5-on-5 goals are starting to come too. In short, the Kings didn’t play well on the weekend and ran into two good teams who took advantage, and honestly, good on them…credit where credit is due.
What’s What for the Centennials:
The Cents have only won 1 game this season, and it was on the opening weekend against the Prince George Spruce Kings. It is going to be a tough year for the Cents, and that can be a dangerous thing for a visiting team. Regan Soquila is their leading scorer (1+9), but there’s no defined scoring leader at this early stage. All but three of the regular roster have at least a point, and all but four have a goal…how’s that for secondary scoring. The Centennials are T-4th for goals scored in the Interior Conference (22), but are T-1st in Goals Against (36 with Trail), so it’s defence and goaltending that might prove to be the sticking point for this year’s Merritt squad and going up against the highest scoring team in the Coastal Conference, will test that this weekend.
What’s on the Broadcast?
During the 1st intermission, we continue to Light the Lamp in our player profile segment, this time with speedy forward Teagan Waugh. Then in the 2nd period, we talk with Merritt blogger Brian Wiebe about his fantastic blog Making Cents (http://merrittcentennials.blogspot.com/) and the work that goes into it. We also touch on social media for the league, and the Centennials this year. We’ll have another pair of tickets to give away for a future Kings game, and of course the three-stars of the night. It all starts at 6:45pm live on 95.7 SunFM, with the call at 7:00pm.
