Blades 2 for 3 on road swing through B.C.
The Saskatoon Blades passed the halfway mark of their five-game, 10-day British Columbia road trip with a passing mark.
The Blades bounced back from a 5-3 loss Tuesday to the Vancouver Giants in Langley, B.C., with a solid 2-1 win Wednesday over the Victoria Royals on Vancouver Island.
Saskatoon has two wins and a loss through the first three games of the trip to improve to 16-9-2-0 this season in the Western Hockey League.
Blades head coach Mitch Love said for the most part, things are going “pretty well” out in B.C.
“The guys had our chances in Vancouver there, especially after 20 minutes,” noted Love, whose team plays tonight in Kamloops before closing out the road swing in Kelowna.
The Blades had a 3-1 lead but gave up four unanswered goals, three of them on the power play, to lose 5-3. “We had a tough specialteam night there — we talked about time and time again that special teams will win or lose you a lot of games in the regular season in this league,” said Love.
“It was one of those nights where it happened on the receiving end. I was really, really impressed by our response (Wednesday night) on a unique travel day over to Victoria, under some interesting circumstances travel-wise, and the kids did a really good job of finding the two points against the Royals.”
On Wednesday, Zach Huber notched the winning goal and Dorrin Luding picked up the win in net for the Blades. It was the third win of the season for Richmond, B.C., product Luding, who was playing in only his seventh game of the season.
“We’re always evaluating where we’re at with our goaltending in terms of trying to get starts and where their energy level’s at, where we’re at with the schedule and travel wise, trying to maximize the effort they can give us, too, with what we can control as a coaching staff,” Love said.
“We felt that it was appropriate to give Dorrin that opportunity. He’s a local B.C. kid with lots of family and friends at the game. He was really, really solid in that process.”
Next up are the Kamloops Blazers, who completed a trade with the Blades to start the week by acquiring Jackson Caller, plus a couple of draft picks, in exchange for defenceman Nolan Kneen.
“Again, it’ll be an interesting evening with the trade that just happened a couple of days ago with Jackson going there and Nolan coming to us,” admitted Love.
“It’ll probably be an extra spice of emotion and both teams will really want the two points. I know Kamloops has been there since Saturday, I’m sure preparing and getting ready for us. We’re taking advantage of this long travel day (Thursday) mentally and physically and we’ll have a good day (Friday) and get ourselves ready for that game. And we’ll tackle Kelowna when we’ll tackle Kelowna.”