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Sports

WolfPack look for revenge against Victoria on home ice

Cam Charron - Sports Editor

Sitting pretty at 8-4 and second in the B.C. Intercollegiate Hockey League, the WolfPack were in strong position for a playoff spot.

They were well ahead of Trinity Western, who they’d beaten three times out of their four games (one game was forfeited due to playing a suspended Dyne Parker) and cruising up ahead of defending champion University of Victoria, who had started off the season on a rocky start.

How things changed, when, for the first games of 2010, the WolfPack walked into Victoria and were out-scored 19-5 by the Vikes, dropping both weekend games. Now, the playoff picture is much closer.

“I don’t know what the reasons were. You couldn’t pinpoint one area of our game,” head coach Chris Hans said. “You go through periods like that during the season, and it was just a bad game all around.”

Goaltender Blake Tancock, who allowed 8 goals on 13 shots Friday, echoed Hans’ sentiment. “Last weekend we were just bad,” Tancock said. “The break kind of got to us. We came back this week, had a really hard practice, and that’s what I think we’ve got to do.”

“We fell away from our systems and we were all playing independently,” said Joel Leonard, who’s second on the WolfPack with 21 points through 14 games.

“We weren’t prepared,” said assistant captain Cody Rose. “We weren’t prepared, but we’ve been working hard in practice and I think it will be a different story next weekend.”

The WolfPack did, however, pick a good time to have a bad couple of games, as they turn around this weekend on Friday and Saturday nights against the very same Victoria Vikes, and have a chance to erase the mistakes of last week.

“We’ve got two full weeks of practice to prepare for one team,” Leonard said. “[Victoria] are sneaking up fast I think they’re right up with us now (The Vikes are in third place behind the WolfPack, just one point back with a game in hand). They’re a good team that has improved since the start of the year, obviously.”

Small, speedy 25-year-old forward David Blake leads the team, with 27 points through just 13 games. Brett Campbell is second on the team with 25 points in just 11 games. His 13 goals lead the team.

“We were fortunate [with the schedule] and things are tightening up in the playoff hunt,” said Hans. “We had a lot of work ahead of us before last weekend started anyways. The scores weren’t really reflective of the games. The games were a little tighter, but there were some massive breakdowns that resulted in the discrepancy of the goals.”

The games are Friday night at 8:45 P.M. and Saturday with a noon start time at Memorial Arena.

“I can’t wait to get them at Memorial” said Blake Tancock. “The building is packed and people are loud. The other rink was awful, there’s nobody there. It was dead. We like playing here. We get people here, it’s loud and we really like it.”