The meaningless hockey games of early- and mid-September will soon give way to ones that count. The last of the former for the Victoria Grizzlies are B.C. Hockey League exhibition contests tonight against the Nanaimo Clippers and Sunday afternoon versus the Powell River Kings at The Q Centre.
They, including the Grizzlies’ earlier respective 3-2 and 7-3 exhibition losses to the Alberni Valley Bulldogs and Cowichan Valley Capitals, are to prepare for the regular-season openers Sept. 20-21 in Powell River against the Kings. The Grizzlies home opener is Sept. 27 at The Q Centre against the Bulldogs.
“These are just exhibition games but they give an indication of where we are,” said returning Grizzlies forward Chase Pirtle.
“We are excited to get going.”
Especially after a relatively promising run last season in the playoffs in which the Grizzlies knocked off the Clippers in the first round and extended the heavily favoured Coastal Conference regular-season champion Surrey Eagles to six games in the conference semifinals.
“We are looking to flip the script this season and go deeper,” said Pirtle.
He will be a big part of that quest after the six-foot-two winger from Far Hills, New Jersey, was named BCHL rookie of the year last season with 25 goals and 52 points in 54 regular-season games and six goals and 12 points in 11 playoff games.
“We have a strong group of returning players,” he said.
Among the forwards they include Pirtle, Jacksenn Hungle and Reegan Hiscock. All are committed to NCAA Div. 1 teams, Pirtle to Cornell, Hungle to Canisius and Hiscock to Northeastern.
Other returnees include goaltender and 2022-23 BCHL rookie-of-the-year Oliver Auyeung-Ashton and forward Tobias Pitka, both NCAA Div. 1 committed, with Auyeung-Ashton to Colgate and U-18 Slovak international Pitka to Boston College. Also returning is reliable veteran forward Ryan Watt. The North Vancouver product is the type of player who earns a letter on his jersey as captain or assistant.
“We are the veterans now, coming in after a pretty good playoff run but looking to go deeper, and we will be required to step up in terms of leadership and to show the new guys how to do things here,” said Pirtle.
“And they will be pushing us to keep proving ourselves. It’s the continuous cycle of hockey.”
Among those new recruits is flash-quick forward Tom Molson from Deerfield Academy of Massachusetts, son of Montreal Canadiens co-owner and president and CEO Geoff Molson and committed to NCAA Yale of the Ivy League, Alex Hebblethwaite who comes west after racking up 55 points in 41 games with the Niagara Falls Canucks of the Ontario Junior Hockey League and has an NCAA scholarship to Rochester Institute of Technology, and 20-year-old Russian defenceman Daniil Dolzhenko, a native of Omsk who has been playing in North America since age 13 via the Notre Dame Hounds of Saskatchewan and the Wisconsin Windigo of the North American Hockey League.
Also new is Stone Rolston, acquired in a trade from the Chilliwack Chiefs. The six-foot-three forward is the son of Brian Rolston, who played 1,256 games in the NHL, won a Stanley Cup with the New Jersey Devils and represented the U.S. in three Olympics, including winning silver at Salt Lake City in 2002.
The general ethos of the Grizzlies under head coach and general manager Rylan Ferster won’t change.
“We are defensive oriented. Our offence comes from good defence,” said Pirtle.
“Everything is not just about the stats. I spent the summer back in New Jersey working on getting bigger, faster and stronger to be more dominant on the ice. This is a big season and I have high expectations of myself.”
So, it seems, do the Grizzlies as a whole.
