Royals moving forward 19 Sept

The Victoria Royals hope to ride a promising offence, abetted by a young, but hopefully improving, defence, to advance past last season’s 24-41-7 record and seventh-place finish in the Western Conference.

But with conference-rivals the Edmonton Oil Kings and Portland Winter Hawks ranked numbers two and four and the Kamloops Blazers given honourable mention in the first BMO Canadian Hockey League Mastercard top-10 poll, it’s hard to imagine anything but a middle-of-the-pack finish for the Royals.

The realistic hope for Victoria is to move from last season’s lower-mid conference standing up to fourth, fifth or sixth. It’s a modest goal but perhaps attainable.

Here is a look at the 2012-13 Royals, from the net out, as they prepare for the regular-season opening games against the Vancouver Giants on Friday at the PNE Pacific Coliseum and Saturday at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.

GOALTENDING: The crease play appears dramatically improved as newcomers Patrik Polivka, a Czech taken in the 2012 import draft who looks to be the starter, listed-player Coleman Vollrath and last season’s back-up Jared Rathjen have all shown well as Victoria went 4-2 in pre-season.

“There’s still a battle going on,” said Royals head coach Dave Lowry.

“It’s a credit to all three guys that they have pushed each other. To be fair to all three of them, there’s no hurry [to make final decisions on starter, back-up and reassignment].”

DEFENCE: This is the Royals’ question mark writ large. The young blue-line corps will be under considerable stress as the club tries to rebuild from the defensive shambles of 2011-12 in which it allowed a glaring league-high 325 goals.

The 2011 first-round bantam pick Joe Hicketts is an under-sized but highly mobile rookie defenceman in the fashion of Victoria native and former WHL blueliner Tyson Barrie, now in the Colorado Avalanche organization. Hicketts’ progress will be closely watched.

So will that of the strapping sophomore blue-liner Keegan Kanzig, who is looking to have a breakout season, although he was left off Central Scouting’s preliminary rankings released Wednesday for the 2013 NHL draft.

The most important guys will be the older defencemen Tyler Stahl, Jordan Fransoo and Brett Cote. They are all quiet-type individuals but integral to a youthful unit they must lead by example.

“We’re young on defence, so the more experienced guys will be relied on heavily to look after the younger guys and mentor them,” said Lowry.

“The biggest thing to learn is that the best defence is to play with the puck in the other team’s end.”

FORWARDS: This is where the Royals could really shine this season. The 2011-12 team leading scorer Jamie Crooks has an uncanny nose for the net and should light it up against defencemen up to four years younger, as should fellow 20-year-old sniper Alex Golgolev, acquired in a trade from the Calgary Hitmen where he scored 25 goals last season.

Steven Hodges and Logan Nelson were taken in the 2012 NHL draft by the Florida Panthers and Buffalo Sabres, respectively, and will give opposing defences fits as they join Crooks on what looks like a potentially highly-productive first line.

Ample secondary scoring should be provided by Albertan Brandon Magee,who is undersized but with a non-stop motor, and the quick-silver American Ben Walker. Key in role support will be returnees Tim Traber, Austin Carroll, Luke Harrison and intriguing newcomer Mitch Deacon.

“We’ve got some skill upfront and good balance,” acknowledged Lowry.

“But our forwards have to understand that skill still has to work hard and show up every night. If not, we have guys that will push our top guys and they’ll get that ice.”

INTANGIBLES: New head coach Lowry and GM Cameron Hope have been active and haven’t taken long in putting their own imprint on the team by jettisoning veterans Keith Hamilton and Mike Forsyth (waivers) and Kate Pilton and Zane Jones (trades).

This is a business, even at the junior level, with the only bottom line being improvement.

Yet, not helping matters for Victoria this season is the NHL lockout, which could see rival WHL teams welcome back strong players who would otherwise be beginning their pro careers. The Royals don’t have any such players to expect back and don’t discount other teams’ potential lockout returnees being a tipping factor.

“But I believe we have very good character as a team,” said Lowry.

So much so that he has not yet named his captain or assistant captains.

“We’ve not talked about it,” he said. “I’m waiting for guys to claim those positions.”


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