Vancouver Giants’ bets on vets pays off in WHL playoff series upset win over Everett Silvertips


Vancouver, the first No. 8 seed to beat a No. 1 in the first round since the WHL playoffs went to 16 teams in 2002, has another tough task ahead in the Kamloops Blazers, a team they finished 46 points behind

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As the Vancouver Giants’ losses piled up down the stretch of their Western Hockey League regular season, it was easy to wonder if the team shouldn’t have traded away a player like Alex Cotton.

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The Giants dealt for Cotton last November, bringing in the 20-year-old puck-moving defenseman to help with a planned run at the top half of the Western Conference standings. They sent four WHL Draft picks and the rights to a prospect defenseman to the Lethbridge Hurricanes in the swap.

That run never materialized. The Giants were too often inconsistent, too individual. They went from buyers to sellers, dealing away top forward Justin Sourdif and veteran defenseman Tanner Brown at the Jan. 17 league trade deadline.

The Giants could have done even more then. There would have been a market for Cotton, a bonafide power-play quarterback. The Giants instead kept him and other older players, saying that they wanted to get into the playoffs.

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They made it, but barely. The Giants lost 11 of their last 12 games and grabbed the eighth and final spot in the Western Conference by a point. Then they promptly found their game in the post-season, becoming the first No. 8 seed to defeat a No. 1 in the opening round since the playoffs went to 16 teams in 2002 when they knocked off the Everett Silvertips 6-3 Monday at the Langley Events Center to win their best-of-seven Western quarter-final series in six games.

Cotton finished the series with four goals and 13 points, helping spearhead a power play that connected at 37.5 per cent (12-of-32) after working at 17.7 per cent (43-of-243) in the regular season.


NEXT GAME

Friday: Game 1

Vancouver Giants vs. Kamloops Blazers

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7 pm, Sandman Centre. Radio: Sportsnet 650.


Vancouver (24-39-5-0) finished 47 points behind Everett (45-13-5-5). They now face the No. 2 Kamloops Blazers (48-17-3-0), a team that wound up a single point behind Everett. That semifinal series starts Friday in Kamloops.

“When you move people like Sourds and Brown, it puts that thought out there that we’re not going for it this year and we’re going to take a step back,” Giants coach Michael Dyck said after Monday’s win. “But we stuck with a lot of the guys that we thought would help us in situations like this.

“I think we always knew that we were capable of some pretty special things. It was just a matter of things falling in line. There were many points during the season that you wondered whether that was ever going to happen. Just when we’d start to get traction, we’d get injuries or suspensions… it was one step forward, one step back. It’s finally nice to get some traction.”

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The Giants beat an Everett team that was missing 46-goal man Jackson Berezowski for the entire series due to an upper body injury, was without 33-goal man Alex Swetlikoff for Games 3 and 4 due to a suspension and didn’t have 37- goal man Niko Huuhtanen for half of Game 5 and all of Game 6 due to a lower body injury.

They beat an Everett team whose goalies gave up 11 goals on just 30 shots in Game 4.

All that said, this was still more about Vancouver winning than it was about Everett losing. The Giants were built initially with the idea of ​​making a long playoff run. They had 10 players in their 19-year-old seasons on the roster much of the season, but many a night they looked like a young team, becoming finicky and panicky at the first sign of trouble.

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Against Everett, they came off seasoned and savvy. With the pressure off, they just played.

The Giants were down 4-2 in the third period of Game 1 and came back to win 5-4 in overtime. Everett proved capable closers in the regular season; they were 42-0-1-2 when leading after two periods then.

Vancouver lost Games 2 and 3 and responded with that 11-6 win in Game 4. Everett tied that game at 6-6 with two goals in the first 2:49 of the third period. Vancouver never once wavered.

The Giants received a 50-save effort from netminder Jesper Vikman in a 3-0 win in Game 5, and they got two goals in the first 3:15 of Game 6, taking away any hope that Everett had before coasting in with the 6 -3 victory.

The three-game win streak to end the Everett series was their longest since they won six straight back in early December, or some 50 games ago.

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“I really think we just had to play a team game,” said Giants captain and first-line center Zack Ostapchuk. “You have to stick together and play the right way or you’re going to get chased out of games.

“We just wanted it so bad. That’s not to say that we didn’t want it in the regular season. We just wanted these guys really bad.”

The Giants received strong efforts up and down their lineup, but their best players were the ones who truly led. Ostapchuk, the Ottawa Senators’ 2021 second rounder who seemingly never came off the ice, totaled three goals and 16 points. And there was Fabian Lysell, the Boston Bruins’ 2021 first rounder who amassed four goals and 15 points against the Silvertips.

Bruins general manager Don Sweeney was quoted in March as saying that Lysell could well join the Bruins once the Giants’ season was over. Lysell played with a palpable desperation against Everett, like he’s going to do absolutely everything he can to keep from leaving Vancouver anytime soon. He had extensive company in the Giants’ dressing room in that as well.

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“I don’t think we ever quit believing that we could win the series,” said Dyck. “Even in those moments that we were down we knew that we could find a way back.”

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