Coach Jason McKee is finding the silver lining after a brutal three-game, three-loss road trip south of the border for the Vancouver Giants.
“We didn’t get a lot of breaks, we didn’t play well,” said McKee.
The Giants lost 5-1 to the Tri-City Americans at the Toyota Centre, with Tyler Popowich the lone scorer for the Giants last Wednesday. He opened the scoring and it was his second marker in as many games, but it was downhill from there, with five unanswered goals for the Americans.
McKee said the game often came down to not getting the saves they needed.
“We gave ourselves a chance,” he said.
Friday night the Spokane Chiefs dealt the Giants a 10-1 loss.
“There’s no freebies anywhere in the West Coast Hockey League,” said McKee.
Ty Ronning had Vancouver’s only goal of the night, equalizing the score in the first. Vancouver was outshot 29-23 and Spokane was 5-for-7 on the power play for the night.
But it was in the third game on Sunday that things started to click for the Giants. “The third game, we bounced back,” McKee said.
Back playing the Americans, the Giants got off to a great start with a goal just 21 seconds into the first period from Ronning, and another from Tyler Popowich.
The game was tied in the second, leading to a shootout won by Tri-City.
Despite the fact that the Giants were outshot 38-28, goalie Tyler Kubic was a wall in the third period, blocking 15 shots and making some remarkable saves.
“It was nice for him to have a bounce back,” said McKee.
The Giants are back on home ice this week, and working on a number of factors, including the all-important power play.
“Our special teams haven’t been good enough, our power play needs to be better,” McKee said.
