What a long and a strange hockey season it has been for the Prince George Spruce Kings.
It started in October when the team gathered for the first practices at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena and with the pandemic was still wreaking havoc on the world. The Kings cautiously went into their self-imposed bubble and over the course of a month played seven exhibition games before a provincial health order shut the league down.
The players were sent home early for Christmas and reconvened while the league continued to develop scheduling scenarios that would allow them to play a regular season. The Penticton bubble concept that would have each team gather together was considered too risky by the health officials so it was back to the drawing board for BCHL’s return-to-play task force. Then on Feb. 18 the Spruce Kings revealed that several players (nine of them) tested positive for COVID-19 and all team activities had to be stopped for the next 14 days.
In the meantime, the league continued to work with the health officials and on March 23 a BCHL schedule was approved with 16 of the 18 teams (excluding the Wenatchee Wild and Langley Rivermen) setting up shop in five pod locations, each to play a 20-game schedule.
Finally, on April 3rd, with the Spruce Kings part of the three-team Chilliwack pod with the Chilliwack Chiefs and Merritt Centennials, the five-week season began . That started a running battle between the Kings and Chiefs which culminated in Sunday’s winner-take-all game between Chilliwack and Prince George to settle first place and the pod championship. The Spruce Kings scored three goals in the first 12 minutes and went to win 4-2, finishing three points ahead of the Chiefs to claim pod supremacy.
There was no trophy presentation, no banner and no medals to be handed out. But the intense satisfaction that came with beating a long-time BCHL rival for the title was enough to boost the boys in blue, red and white to stratospheric heights. After 42 consecutive nights of self-imposed exile in hotel rooms, countless nose-swab COVID tests and the eerie silence of playing games in an empty Chilliwack Coliseum with only their opponents, a few officials and rows of cardboard cutouts of fans bearing witness, it was all worth it to the Spruce Kings. They rolled back into town on the bus from Chilliwack early Monday morning still basking in the glow of having won their final game of the season.
“It was very different, I don’t know if that will happen again, playing a very condensed schedule living out of a hotel for 42 days but we’re just thankful we were able to do it with a good group of kids and good staff that made it enjoyable,” said Kings head coach Alex Evin. “I’m glad we had some success.
“When we first got there we knew the hockey would be pretty sloppy, we hadn’t been in any game play since early November and that was a lot of time off, so definitely a lot of rust. Our goal for our group is to find something we like in our game and find something we can improve and that was our mindset going through the pod. I was just worried about our game being consistent and thought if we could get to that point the wins would take care of themselves and we became more consistent the more we played.”
Just five of the current Kings, those born in 2000, are not eligible to return next season including forwards Christian Buono, Hunor Torzsok and Andrew Seaman, and defencemen Tanner Main and captain Mason Waite. All five seniors supplied quality leadership that was expected of them. Buono led the Kings with 14 goals and 27 points in 20 games, while Waite was second on the team with four goals and 19 points. Seaman, the lone American on the team, had 10 goals and 16 points in 17 games before he broke his collarbone after taking a hard check in a game against the Chiefs.
Buono, a 20-year-old Burnaby native, joined the Spruce Kings in the off-season from Merritt and put together a career year, with 14 goals and 13 assists for 27 points in 20 games. His 14th goal in Thursday’s game made it 2-0 and that was the 100th point of his four-season BCHL career. He also picked up a pair of assists in his final junior game.
“All the guys knew I was coming up on the 100-point mark and they tried to set me up,” said Buono. “We were battling injuries, our forward group, we had 10 forwards that last three games and we got a good start, it was what we wanted. We didn’t want to let the foot off the gas. We had a couple shifts in the second period we didn’t want to have but I thought throughout the game we did a good job, considering we had 10 forwards.”
Among the Kings’ skaters who lacked seasoning going into the pod, there were plenty of bright spots. Kolton Cousins emerged as a leader in his second BCHL season and scored eight goals while newcomers John Herington, Nick Rheaume, Rowan Miller, Linden Makow and Kilian McGregor-Bennett showed promise of even better things to come in 2021-22. On the blueline, Amran Bhabra and Colton Cameron took huge steps forward as BCHL sophomores, and rookies Connor Elliott and Ben LeFranc offered glimpses they could soon emerge as mainstays on the back end.
Defence was the strength of the Spruce Kings this year and that was certainly a question mark early on, going into the season with three rookie goalies. The Kings surrendered just 37 goals in 20 games – second only to Penticton among the 16 teams. Goalies Aaron Trotter, Jordan Fairlie and Kobe Grant each recorded a pair of shutouts in their first BCHL season and their teammates in front of them obviously bought into Evin’s defence-first strategies. Six shutouts in 20 games is indeed a rare accomplishment and a source of pride in the Kings’ camp.
“Those three did a really good job, we weren’t sure how they would do,” said Evin. We knew they were good teammates and practiced well but you don’t really know until you play games. The made a lot of the saves they should have made and as a team we played pretty solid and didn’t give up a ton of scoring chances 5-on-5 and it helped the transition for those young goalies, but they deserve a ton of credit too because they played well.”
Evin was hard on his players early in the season when they were taking seven or eight penalties each game and that strict approach transpired into a well-disciplined team during the final few weeks of the schedule.
“We had some penalty trouble and we kept preaching if we stay out of the box it’s going to be hard to beat us because we’re a good team at everything else,” said Buono. “I think as the games went on we took less and less penalties and it shows on the scoreboard we were a good team 5-on-5.”
The Kings put together a six-game win streak that pushed them past the Chiefs and gave them momentum to build off in the final week. Prince George’s 87.2 per cent penalty-killing efficiency was third in the league and they gave up just 11 power-play goals and scored a league-high eight times while shorthanded.
“For the last few seasons the success our organization has had a lot of that has been attributed to a lot of disciplined play,” said general manager Mike Hawes. ‘The year we won the league championship (2019) we were the least the penalized team in the league and it isn’t a coincidence.”
Despite all the hoops they had to jump through Buono said the inconveniences were well worth it for what they got out of the season.
“It was a fun time, in our hotel rooms and stuff - we had activities to do every day in practice and we were all active every day and the games were good and I’m really happy with the outcome,” said Buono.
“We saw in the BCHL guys leaving, not knowing if the league was going to start or not, and we just kind of stuck to it. I wanted to stay here and hope for the chance that we did play and couldn’t be happier we did get that chance and we did an awesome job.“
Hawes watched all 20 games on his computer screen and he says his team deserves a lot of credit for enduring what they did being isolated for so long on the team’s longest-ever roadtrip.
“First and foremost I’m happy for the coaches and the players, it was a tough year and they persevered and stayed on task and the coaches did a good job keeping everybody engaged all year long in months and month of practice,” said Hawes. “ I’m glad they were rewarded with a tremendous pod season and crowned as pod champions.
“I would have liked to see to have seen what this group could have done in a normal season but that being said there are so many good things that happened in these 20 games and I’m really looking forward to next year. We have a great group of players returning and the recruiting’s gone real well.”
Hawes could have as many as 19 returning players next season, although it won’t likely be that many with some higher-profile recruits already lined up. The COVID quirks the past two springs mean the Spruce Kings will start next season as the three-time defending Fred Page Cup champions and with a lot to work with on the team already the Kings are setting their sights high for another successful season.
