Well a bittersweet day today in the castle as the team learned of its punishment as a result of the events that played out in the first minute of Saturday's third period. The team also learned of another returning player from last year's squad.
Starting with the bad news, the British Columbia Hockey League has reviewed the game DVD from Saturday night that saw a near line brawl early in the third period. The league has long talked about minimizing fighting in the BCHL and has taken steps to bring in stricter penalties for offenders. One such rule revolves around multiple fights in the same stoppage in play.
There certainly were multiple fights following an incident that pitted Luke Curadi, the Penticton Vees enforcer, up against the Spruce Kings franchise player, Sam Muchalla. The ensuing melee saw a combined total of four fights on the ice at the same stoppage; the first fight was ruled to be that of Justin Fillion scrapping it out with Curadi. The players involved in the three other pairings were all assessed two game suspensions each.
That means that Josh Pineiro, Jeff Earnest and Sam Muchalla will all be scratched while serving their suspensions for Wednesday's game against the Quesnel Millionaires and also Friday's game in Merritt against the Centennials. On the other side of the ledger, the Penticton Vees will have to sit out Garrett Milan, Ben Sexton and Alex Szczechura for two games each. It should be noted that all three of the Vees players have already sat out one game, missing the Sunday game in Quesnel.
On a more upbeat note, the Spruce Kings announced the return of Spruce Kings veteran goaltender Alex Wright. Having spent a great deal of the summer preparing for the season, Alex started with the Spokane Chiefs of the Western Hockey League and was there right to the bitter end before being the last cut before the start of WHL regular season.
Speaking with Alex, he is extremely excited and looking forward to getting back into the Junior 'A' game for his hometown team and to contribute to the success of the Spruce Kings any way he can. He sees this as an opportunity for himself to improve his play even that much more ... remember it was his play with the Chiefs that kept him on the preseason roster.
In his very first preseason game, Alex Wright earned a shutout as the Chiefs posted a 3-0 lead over the Seattle Thunderbirds. With a maturity that exceeds his years, Alex believes that his experiences with the Chiefs have made him that much better of a goaltender for the Spruce Kings and his goal is to improve on a very impressive rookie year.
In the backup role to Kevin Genoe last season, Alex Wright was still able to play over 1,000 minutes in 20 games and posted the team's second best ever goals against average for a single season and fifth best save percentage. A check of the Spruce Kings record book shows that Alex finished last season with a 2.52 GAA, second only to Michael-Lee Teslak's 2.47. His save percentage was also in the highly sought after better than 90 percent mark at 91.18 again only slightly behind the likes of Teslak and Brad Thiessen.
Watch for Alex to get the start in Quesnel on Wednesday night as the Spruce Kings head out on their first road trip of the season. The suspensions to Muchalla and Earnest will put a little more pressure on the offense to perform with a couple of key ingredients. The absence of Pineiro should also result in an opportunity for Chris Gularte to get into the game and show what he can do after being a scratch in both of the games last weekend.
It will be interesting to see how the Spruce Kings respond to their opening weekend results and the absence of their three suspended players, but also how they play in front of Alex Wright. The game will be broadcast on 93.1 CFIS-FM and simulcast online using the radio station's streaming audio player. The link to access the internet audio broadcast will be from the station's logo on the Spruce Kings website. If you would like to test your system's capability of playing the audio stream from the radio station, CLICK HERE.
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