It took less than five minutes of post-season playing time for the North Vancouver Wolf Pack to get a stark reminder that playoff hockey is a different beast than the regular season.
The Wolf Pack were fired up for their first playoff action in nearly two years after the 2020 playoffs were cut short – with North Van headed to the PJHL finals – by the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, while the 2021 playoffs were wiped out entirely by that continuing crisis.
This year, however, the PJHL put together something close to a typical season, and the Wolf Pack put together their typical top-of-the-standings performance, finishing first in the PJHL’s Tom Shaw Conference and tied for the most points in the league with a record of 31-7-5-1.
The quirks of arena availability, however, meant they would start the playoffs on the road against the fourth-place White Rock Whalers Tuesday night (Feb. 15). And it was the underdog Whalers who went on the attack immediately, scoring two goals in the first five minutes. White Rock continued to pile it on from there, and the final score read 7-1 for the host team.
It wasn’t the best time to suffer their worst defeat of the season, said Wolf Pack head coach and general manager Matt Samson.
“We just didn't match their energy,” he said. “It’s not the result we wanted and the start we wanted for a first game, for sure. … We knew their game plan going in, and we played them a bunch of tight games over the course of a year, and I just think we weren't able to, for whatever reason, match that energy and play with kind of that playoff mindset. They were completely ready to go from puck drop, and we were passengers for a lot of the game.”
Luckily for the Wolf Pack, it’s a seven-game series, and all those White Rock goals from Game 1 don’t carry over into any other game. The two teams will be back at it for Games 2 and 3 Saturday and Sunday at North Vancouver’s Harry Jerome Arena.
Samson said they’ll review the film from Tuesday’s drubbing, but he doesn’t expect to make any major changes.
“The biggest thing is we have to find that extra gear and understand this is playoff time, and the energy and the emotion is different than the regular season,” he said.
This year, the Wolf Pack came into the season with a young team – they didn’t have any 20-year-olds on their opening day roster for the first time in years – but their young guns played well, and they’ve added veteran players to the mix throughout the year.
A strong core helped push the team to top spot in the conference throughout the season, said Samson, including the goaltending tandem of Sam Gilmore and Damian Perovic, defenceman Jonathan Wong, rookie forwards David Coyle and JJ Pickell – No. 1 and 2 on the team in points – and veterans Alex Binette and Ryan Hunter.
With the record they put up in the regular season, you could excuse the Wolf Pack for looking past White Rock toward the conference finals, but that’s not the case for anyone on the North Vancouver squad, said Samson, particularly after the Game 1 performance.
“Right now we’ve just got to focus on White Rock, and it’s going to be tough to get through these guys,” he said. “It speaks to how hard our division is. It’s tough playing a 44-game schedule and tying for first overall, and then you're seeing a really good team – in my opinion, one of the top three or four teams in the entire league, in the first round. That’s just the way it is with our league right now, but we're just going to focus on White Rock and find a way to get back in this.”
Game 2 of the series between the Whalers and Wolf Pack will start at 7 p.m. Saturday night at Harry Jerome Arena, while puck drop for Game 3, also at Harry Jerome, will be at 6 p.m. Spectators are now allowed at full capacity, while all in attendance must wear a mask while in the building and show a vaccine passport to gain entry, as per provincial health regulations.