Hockey
Giants Win Home Opener
The Giants return to the confines of the PNE following a summer of tragedy both on and off the ice.
Prior to the game they paid tribute to Milan Illich who passed away in June and was a supportive member of hockey in the area.
Ilich (76) passed away following a 14 month battle with AML leukemia and he leaves behind a list of deeds on behalf of both charitable and community causes, including the establishment by himself and his wife Maureen of a Canada research chair in multiple sclerosis.
The Giants paid tribute to former Giant and Stanley Cup Champion Milan Lucic by handing out posters to the first 7000 fans attending.
The 50/50 on this night was sold by the Rotary Club’s. Delta’s Rick Lewall was the one that handled this.
I was told that proceeds went to the eradication of Polio. Great cause and extra special to have the Rotary Club’s step up.
The first game of the 2011-12 season has the Giants play host to the re-located Chilliwack Chiefs – now called the Victoria Royals and is played in front of 6,118 fans.
The last time hockey at this level was in Victoria dates back to 1994 and it was only a matter of time it returned.
Head Coach Don Hay enters his 8th season and is the 3rd winningest coach in WHL regular season history with a total of 521 career victories. He is tied for the most wins in the WHL wins in play-offs with 101.
Don is also the Head Coach of Team Canada for the 2012 World Junior Hockey Championships and led Canada to Gold at the 1995 World Junior Championships in Red Deer.
Not in the line-up tonight is speedster Brendan Gallagher who has the chance to break major offensive record in franchise history.
He has 95 goals, 108 assists and 203 points and needs only 32 goals to pass Adam Courchaine for most career goals.
He also needs only 47 assists to pass Jonathon Blum for most career assists and only 71 points to pass Courchaine for most career points. He was a 1st team all-star last season and has back-to-back 30 goal seasons.
Brendan finished his 2nd pre-season with no points, 2 PIM’s and 4 shots on goal.
The Giants new goaltending coach Paul Fricker is impressed with Brendan Jensen who calls El Granada home in the off-season is set to be the main-stay in goal. Brendan stands 6’1″ and is 188lbs and is eligible for the draft in 2012.
It took a while, but the Giants Martinook got the 4th goal of the game at 9:25 while playing shorthanded.
The Royals showed much more hustle in the third and managed to get within two in the dying minutes of the game, but the effort came up a “tad” shy.
With just over a minute left the Royals pulled the tender for the added punch, only to see the Giants get a loose puck and get a shot on the open net. The 5th goal for the Giants was scored by Dalton Sward at 19:11.
McNaughton squared off with Pilton with only 5 seconds left, but this was listed as “no-contest” only due to the sticks and gloves that were in the way of both players.
More than anything else this was only frustration on the part of the Royals, sending them home with the first visit to Vancouver as well as the first loss of the season.
The end of the game saw a scrap, but the officials managed to settle things down before anything got out of hand.
Shots were Giants 33, Royals 28.
Game starts were:
1st Anthony Ast
2nd Jordan Martinook
3rd Robin Soudek