The Victoria Royals, in desperate need of points to claim a spot in the Western Hockey League playoffs, were looking to duplicate their feat from Friday with another strong third period.
However, the Everett Silvertips were not about to let the Royals come back on Saturday from a
1-0 second-period deficit. The Silvertips rode the goaltending of Kent Simpson and defensive play en route to a 3-0 victory over the Royals before 7,963 fans at the Comcast Arena in Everett.
On Friday in Kelowna, the Royals trailed the Rockets 1-0 after two periods but then responded with three unanswered goals for a 3-1 win.
With the victory, the Silvertips vault over the Royals into seventh place with 51 points, one more than the eighth-place Royals. The top eight teams in the Western Conference advance to the playoffs. The Seattle Thunderbirds and the Prince George Cougars are tied for ninth place, four points behind Victoria.
Cody Fowlie opened the scoring for Everett early in the first period, and the second was scoreless. At 1:23 of the third period, with the Royals on the power play, Joshua Winquist scored shorthanded to deflate the Royals. That extended Winquist's point streak to seven games.
"Everett has a solid team, and we have struggled to score goals against them, especially in Everett,'' said Royals coach and GM Marc Habscheid. "In our last two games here, we have scored only two goals and you are not going to win a lot of games doing that.''
Habscheid said the game's turning point came early in the third period with that shorthanded goal.
"We were on the power play, pressing for the tying goal, and then they made it 2-0,'' said Habscheid. "That shorthanded goal put us on our heels and we had to take more chances by opening it up to get those two back.''
Everett swept the season-series against Victoria 4-0.
The Royals conclude the road portion of their regular season this afternoon (5 p.m.) in Vancouver against the Giants.
Victoria finishes the regular season with a two-game series at home on Wednesday and Friday against the Portland Winterhawks. Game time both nights at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre is 7 p.m.
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