T-Birds Date With Destiny Will Have to Wait 'til Next Year

South Island Thunderbirds, March 14, 2009

The players believed they could.  So did their coaches and team staff.  The parents, friends and supporters far and wide believed it too and cheered the South Island Thunderbirds every step of the way.

And oh did the players try hard to make it happen.  They overcame injuries and sickness, emptied the tank (and for several, their stomachs too) and left everything they had on the ice in the battle.  It was an adrenaline filled and action packed performance and it provided outstanding entertainment and excitement.

But this time, it was not meant to be.  Or perhaps allowed to be.  On Saturday night at the Burnaby Winter Club, the South Island Thunderbirds had the Vancouver North West Giants in a vulnerable position for 47 minutes but could not catch the breaks they needed to pull off the improbable upset.  As inspired as their effort was, so too was the ending frustrating as sadly, and as if the T-Birds’ tall task against the BCMML’s runaway first place team was not tough enough, they were buried in the game’s final 23 minutes by a referee who took center stage in whistling the Birds for eight penalties in that time frame.  Too bad as to that point, it was a most compelling contest and it would have been so much better for the final outcome to have been settled by the players themselves.

In the end, the Giants needed no help from the officials as their superior speed and skill were lethal and while their mettle was certainly tested, they never surrendered the early lead they took in Game 2 of the BCMML playoff semi-final series.  They kept coming at the T-Birds and got three late goals to pull away to a series clinching 5 – 1 victory, moving on to the finals next week and ending the Thunderbirds’ great season and Cinderella story.

To fully appreciate Saturday’s contest, you have to understand the context for the series.  This was one of those special David and Goliath match-ups that pitted the fittingly named Giants, who have been the BCMML’s most dominant team and are stacked with well recruited stars, against the up and coming Thunderbirds, who waged a season long battle just to qualify for the playoffs for the first time and comprise the grittiest, hardest working and tightest collection of underrated late-blooming prospects around.

Clearly, the weight of expectations bears heavily on the Giants after finishing first in the regular season for the second straight year.  They are the league’s “poster child” and a team of considerable privilege, with a program that features the best of everything from a practice and preparation perspective (even staying in a hotel for this home series).  But in spite of their program’s success, their current challenge is to erase the memory of last season’s abrupt semi-final round defeat to a Cariboo Cougars team that finished 32 points behind them in the standings.

Contrast that with the South Island squad, which finished strong but still ended up 29 points behind the Giants in the current year’s regular season.  The Thunderbirds made the playoffs with only a single point to spare and then upset the third place Okanagan Rockets last week to earn the team’s first ever playoff series victory.  A win for the Thunderbirds in even a single game against the Giants would send reverberations rippling across Western Canada’s entire hockey community.  Few times in one’s hockey career do players have an opportunity to achieve such a dramatic outcome to change perceptions and make so many observers at every level take notice.

Against that backdrop, Friday’s game went according to form.  Vancouver’s Ryan Nugent-Hopkins showed why he was drafted first overall in the 2008 WHL Bantam draft and is already being talked about on Sportsnet.  His four points were the difference in a 5 – 1 Giants win.  But the series is a best two out of three affair and that still set up Game 2 as a perfect time for the T-Birds to seize the momentum and test the Giants’ will.

Game 2 started well again for the Giants again even as South Island came out in a more assertive and aggressive fashion than the night before.  Just two minutes in to the game, the Giants’ outstanding 16 year old captain, Joey Laleggia, showed how he became the league’s highest scoring defenceman with a brilliant rush that created a 2 on 1 heading over the Thunderbirds’ blue line.  He flipped a perfect backhand saucer pass to Curtis Loik streaking to the left post and Loik’s quick wrist shot went up high and in off the left post to give the Giants the early 1 – 0 lead.

The two teams traded three penalties each through the rest of the period which allowed Vancouver to flash its considerable power play skills.  With those man advantage situations, the Giants got a lot more pucks to the net than the T-Birds on their opportunities and the last of those led to the Giants’ second goal with just 1:32 remaining.  A centering pass from Steven Iacobellis found Nugent-Hopkins in front and he one-timed a backhand that slid through the five hole of the T-Birds’ outstanding goalie Brandon Glover to make it 2 - 0.

The Thunderbirds’ best scoring chance in the opening frame came on an almost perfect wrist shot from Wesley Myron that beat Giants’ goalie Khaleed Devji cleanly but rang off the crossbar at the 5:00 minute mark.

Coming into the game, the T-Birds’ coaching staff’s key strategy had been to neutralize Nugent-Hopkins as much as possible and take their chances with the rest of the Giants.  To accomplish that task, Chase Kaiser was assigned to shadow the Giants’ star and Kaiser did a great job of keeping Nugent-Hopkins’ puck possession to a minimum at even strength.  Limited to that one power play goal and an assist on the power play in the third period, he had few shots on goal, was minus one at even strength and was not a big factor in the game’s outcome.  The depth of the Giants prevailed however and on this day there were other players who stepped up to carry the load.

The second period was nothing short of amazing.  The Giants started well again and outshot the T-Birds early on, though most of the shots came from the perimeter and were easily handled by Glover.  The tone of the game changed dramatically however in the fifth minute with the two teams playing 4 on 4.  Brandon Nicholson made an excellent play taking the puck around the Giants’ net and then circled to play the puck back to Garett Kemmler at the left point.  Kemmler’s perfect slap shot stayed low and was deftly deflected past Devji by South Island’s captain Chase Kaiser and suddenly, it was a one goal game.

That goal inspired both teams who battled tooth and nail in a thrilling battle for the remainder of the period.  While the Giants again seized the territorial advantage, they could not beat Glover and the T-Birds’ defenders fought relentlessly to get the puck out of their zone against the Giants’ super-aggressive forecheck.  The Birds took the body at every opportunity and delivered a number of crunching hits along the way, most notably by Mark Walton and Kurtis Rumenovich.  At the other end, the Thunderbirds had a few good looks at the net, the best of which saw their shots just miss wide.

The challenge for the Thunderbirds was made dramatically tougher with three minutes remaining in the second period, when Wesley Myron was called for two marginal penalties on one play, which was a fairly unbelievable intervention by the referee to disrupt the flow of the game and give the Giants an extended power play opportunity to bury the Thunderbirds once and for all.  Then the challenge was doubled again with one minute remaining when Nugent-Hopkins tried to jump between two closely grouped defenders, fell down and induced a hooking call.

Over the course of those last three minutes of the period, the Giants rained pucks on Glover without success as Brandon was focused and comfortable and either absorbed the puck or played it out of harm’s way.  The T-Birds’ penalty killers were heroic as well, summoning all their remaining energy and seizing every opportunity to clear the zone.  The period finished with the score still 2 – 1 and the Birds’ left to a loud and prolonged standing ovation from their many supporters in the standing room only crowd.

The shots on goal were very one sided, actually 37 – 11 at that point, though they did not tell the whole story as the T-Birds were very much in the game.  Clearly, the next goal would be pivotal and the T-Birds rightly believed that if it came their way, they could rattle their opponents and make it to Sunday’s Game 3.

First, South Island’s penalty killers had to survive another minute of being shorthanded 5 on 3, which they did, and then for the next six minutes, the game was very much up for grabs.  Chase Kaiser had the Birds’ best opportunity to tie the game shortly after the penalties expired when he streaked into the Giants’ zone and blistered a slap shot that was labeled for the far corner past a helpless Devji, but it just missed the post by a whisker.

The decisive play came seven minutes into the period.  Laleggia came down the right side on another rush and threw the puck to the top of the crease where a closely covered Connor Wilson was headed.  The puck bounced off Wilson and dropped down in front of Glover and he butterflied while putting his glove down to cover it.  In the collision that followed, Glover was pushed back into the net, he reached back behind him and the net came off its moorings.  The referee trailed the play and was only at the top of the face-off circle when Wilson threw up his hands to signal that the puck was in the net.  With no hesitation, and though from his vantage point it appeared to be physically impossible for him to see the puck over the line in the melee, the referee gave the goal signal.  Glover’s protests and those from the T-Birds’ coaches were ignored and the Giants had a big insurance goal.

Still there was plenty of hockey left to play and Glover and his mates soldiered on, working as hard as ever to get the next goal to draw back within one.  That effort was short-circuited with nine minutes left, when the referee called a bench minor on South Island head coach Rob Milliken for complaining that the Giants’ face-off men were not being made to put their sticks on the ice before the puck was dropped.  Brady Brassart scored on the ensuing power play and then the referee called a penalty for cross-checking along with a second bench minor on Milliken, whose frustration with the referee’s work had boiled over by that point.  It was shared by many in the rink.

Laleggia scored on the 5 on 3 to make it 5 – 1 and then two more penalties were called on the Birds in the final five minutes.  The Thunderbirds still did not give an inch and worked their tails off to the final whistle.

The Thunderbirds’ media panel selected Laleggia as the Giants’ player of the game while Glover and Kaiser shared those honors for the Thunderbirds.

Head Coach Rob Milliken was obviously disappointed with the outcome but his emotional post-game speech to his players was straight from the heart as he thanked and congratulated them all:  “I could not ask you guys for anything more than you gave today.  You can be very proud of your work and I am just sorry it had to end tonight.”

The Giants move on to play the Greater Vancouver Canadians in the best of three finals next weekend.  The Canadians completed a dramatic series comeback against the Cariboo Cougars, dropping the first game and then winning games two and three in thrilling fashion.

For the Thunderbirds, the 2008-2009 post-season party is over and the players will now move on to spring camps, Best Ever competition and off-season training.  All of the South Island players are eligible to return to the BCMML next season and, while some players could get an opportunity to move up to the BCHL or WHL, there should be a solid nucleus coming back to try to raise the bar of success again.

One thing is for sure about all of these guys - their best days are ahead of them and this team is going the right direction.

Bird Droppings:  The final shots on goal in Saturday’s contest were 14-23-15=52 for Vancouver and 6-5-3=14 for South Island… The penalty minutes assessed totaled 24 minutes for South Island and 10 for Vancouver… The T-Birds were 0 for 5 on the power play while the Giants’ power play was 3 for 12… The scoring summary for the Birds included:  Kaiser (1G), Kemmler (1A) and Nicholson (1A).  For the Giants, the scorers were:  Laleggia (1G, 2A), Loik (1G), Nugent-Hopkins (1G, 1A), Iacobellis (1A), Jared Eng (1A), Wilson (1G), Brassart (1G), Brodie Jamieson (1A) and Andrew McCarthy (1A).