Victoria Royals head coach James Patrick, who played with Mario Lemiuex and Wayne Gretzky for victorious Canada in the 1987 Canada Cup, thought about using the Canada win Thursday over the U.S. in the 4 Nations Face-Off as inspiration in his pre-game speech Saturday night.
“It popped into my head when I was addressing the team but I didn’t go there,” he said.
He didn’t have to. The Royals were jacked enough. They chased starter Joshua Ravensbergen of the Prince George Cougars, the top-ranked North American goaltender for the 2025 NHL draft, from the net in the first period with three goals on just five shots. The Royals parlayed that start into a 6-3 Western Hockey League victory.
“That was our best first period in a month,” said Patrick.
“The guys were extremely keen and had jump. We put tremendous pressure on them [Cougars] in that period.”
The win moved Victoria (34-15-9) nine points ahead of the second-place Cougars (31-19-6) in the race for the B.C. Division championship although the Cougars retain two games in hand.
Victoria, which also beat Prince George 5-3 on Friday, swept their two-game set. The teams have two head-to-head games remaining — the regular-season concluding set on March 21-22 in Prince George.
“These were two huge games for us and we want to keep the momentum going,” said Victoria captain Justin Kipkie, an NHL draft pick of Utah HC.
The divisional championship is significant because the American and B.C. Division champions will be seeded 1-2 for the Western Conference playoffs. So even though the Royals are third overall in the conference behind the U.S. Division’s Everett Silvertips and Spokane Chiefs, they are currently the conference second seed as B.C. Division leader.
The first period Saturday was highlighted by Victoria rookie defenceman Keaton Verhoeff’s rink-length rush to score his 16th goal of the season to show why Craig Button of TSN has the budding 16-year-old star ranked No. 4 overall for the 2026 NHL draft.
Also scoring for the Royals in the first were Escalus Burlock and Kenta Isogai, the latter his 29th goal of the season. Finnish import and Winnipeg Jets NHL draft pick Markus Loponen made it 4-0 in the second period. Koehn Ziemmer, a third-round NHL draft pick of the Los Angeles Kings, scored twice to key a Cougars surge to 4-3 before Teydon Trembecky’s 37th and 38th goals of the season, both into empty nets, put it away for Victoria.
Royals forward Cole Reschny, ranked by TSN for the first round and Central Scouting for the second round of the 2025 NHL draft, joined Verhoeff in giving pro scouts more grist for the mill by extending his points streak to 13 games with two assists.
Jayden Kraus made 23 saves in goal for Victoria. Cooper Michaluk made 19 saves and Ravensbergen two for the Prince George club, which skated as the Victoria Cougars from 1971-72 to 1993-94.
The Cougars will be back at CN Centre Tuesday and Wednesday to face the Kelowna Rockets.
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