The Delta Ice Hawks not only pulled even in their Pacific Junior Hockey League championship series but also re-discovered some much-needed offensive scoring punch.
The Hawks cruised to a 6-1 victory on Tuesday night at the Ladner Leisure Centre to tie the best-of-series at 1-1 with weekend games up next in Maple Ridge, starting Friday.
It was their biggest offensive output of the post-season in 11 games and it came on the heels of their lowest point — a 2-1 triple overtime loss despite firing 88 shots at Flames goalie Paul Tucek.
As brilliant as the 20-year-old was between the pipes, the outcome punctuated an offensive dry spell that had resulted in only six goals over their last 14 periods.
Captain Gary Dhaliwal solved Tucek in the early going with a terrific finish on a two-on-one shorthanded break. It remained a 1-0 game until the Hawks at last erupted to close out the second period on goals by Nathan Pelletier, Jordan Bogress and Jesse Nelson. Alex Suprynowicz and Dhaliwal rounded out the third after the Flames broke Jordan Naylor’s shutout bid.
It was the first goals of the playoffs for Bogress and Suprynowicz — a pair of key offensive performers who combined for 34 goals in the regular season. Bogress led the Hawks in scoring a year ago and had 16 in 24 games after returning to his hometown team from Humboldt of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League. His drought ended on superb finish to beat Tucek upstairs.
“The guys needed to get the swagger back a bit,” said Hawks head coach Steve Robinson. “After the second and third (goals) I could feel it coming on. When I watched (game one) back it was like how (did we lose)? How? At one point we had 40 straight shots. It was like watching a video game.
“It was crazy but when you go through those stretches like we have been through you can see guys pressing. Below the (face-off) dots we are squeezing plays, are too shallow and not creating depth. I could see what was happening. It’s like trying to overpower a golf course when you are trying too hard.
“We needed to go side-to-side, get more traffic and use the high areas of the zone more. We did a better job tonight of doing that.”
The Flames still got what they wanted in Ladner — a series split to take back on their home ice where they are 5-1 in the playoffs despite dealing with injuries much of the time. Two more affiliates were in the line-up Tuesday.
Head coach Bayne Ryshak gave Tucek the third period off for a well-deserved rest in favour of former Ice Hawk Cooper Anderson.
Delta actually has a better post-season road record than at home — sweeping a pair of games in Grandview and Richmond on their way to series wins.
“They are a proud team and they are going to come back hard trying to hold that home ice as well as they can,” added Robinson. “Tonight checked a lot of boxes and emotionally deep down we knew how the teams stack up and we just got to do our business — wearing them down game by game, shift by shift. We will be ready to play Friday.”
Game four is slated for Sunday afternoon before the teams return to Ladner on Monday at 7:30 p.m.
