Saturday, May 9, 2009

Game Six Notes vs. Hitmen

Tonight’s Preview: The Kelowna Rockets and Calgary Hitmen are meeting in game six of the Western Hockey League championship final. The Rockets have a 3-2 lead in the best of seven series after a 3-1 win in game one, a 5-2 victory in game two and a 2-0 shutout win in game three. The Hitmen have won the last two games though, after a 6-2 victory in game four and a 6-1 win in game five. These two teams have never met in the league final. The Rockets are appearing in the championship series for the third time in franchise history. The Rockets made an appearance in 2003 with a 6 game series win over Red Deer before earning a five game series win against Brandon in 2005. If a game seven is necessary, it will be played Monday in Calgary. This season the Rockets and Hitmen met twice, with both games being played in Calgary. Both games were decided by a single goal.

What’s Happened So Far: The Hitmen have outscored the Rockets 15-13 in the first five games with the Hitmen out-scoring the Rockets 12-3 in the last two games…The Hitmen have out-shot the Rockets 164-128 in the five games….The Hitmen are 5 for 24 on the power play in the series (20.8%) while the Rockets are 2 for 17 (11.8%) with the man advantage…The Rockets have failed to score a power play goal in four straight games after scoring twice with the man advantage in game one….The Rockets have out-scored the Hitmen 7-6 in the third period…Only four of the twenty-eight goals (14%) in the series have been scored in the first period. ..The Rockets have been out-scored 10-3 in the final 40 minutes of games four and five…The Rockets have not lost three games in a row in the playoffs. The last time the Rockets lost three or more games was from January 16th to January 23rd when the team was winless in four games (0-2-0-2)…It will be six years tomorrow that the Rockets won their very first WHL title. It was May 10, 2003 when the Rockets beat the Red Deer Rebels 2-0 in six games.

Game Six Success: The Rockets are 2-0 in game six situations. The Rockets beat Tri City 6-2 in game six of round two and were a 5-4 winner in overtime in game six against Vancouver in round three. Both game six wins were series clinching victories.

Turn It Up A Notch: Ian Duval scored ten goals with the Rockets in 26 regular season games and has managed to score ten goals in 21 playoff games. Mikael Backlund had 12 goals in 28 regular season games with the Rockets and now has 11 goals in just 18 playoff games.
In case You Are Wondering: The Rockets have never won a WHL championship title at home. Both wins came on the road in Red Deer in 2003 and in Brandon in 2005…Since 2000, five teams have won the Western Hockey League title with 47 wins or fewer. The last team to win the league title with the same number of wins as the Rockets had this season were the Vancouver Giants, who had 47 victories during the regular season before beating Moose Jaw in 2006. The 2005 Rockets won a WHL title with just 45 wins during the regular season. Medicine Hat had 40 wins in 2004, while Kootenay had 38 victories before capturing the title in 2002. Kootenay also had 44 wins before winning the league in 2000…The Rockets can't touch the Hitmen when it comes to points, wins and goals scored. The Hitmen had 12 more wins and 13 fewer losses than the Rockets during the regular season…The Rockets scored 63 fewer goals and allowed 19 more against than the Hitmen….The Hitmen scored 36 more power play goals than the Rockets during the regular season, and also had 21 more chances with the extra man…The Hitmen had nine players with 50 or more points while the Rockets had just five…The Rockets had five - 20 goal scorers this season. The Hitmen had 7.
I Didn’t Know That: Jamie Benn is now the Kelowna Rockets franchise leader in points in one playoff season. Benn has 31 playoff points, three more than Jesse Schultz, who put up 28 points in the 2003 post season…The Rockets are playing their 22nd playoff game tonight. That means the Rockets are playing their 94th game of the season tonight if you include the 72 game regular season schedule. The franchise record for playoff games played is 24, set during the 2005 post season…Ian Duval has 18 points in 21 playoff games this season after recording just 3 points (1+2=3) in 16 playoff games with the Calgary Hitmen last season.

6 comments:

Sir Loungealot said...

Regan - I'm in New orleans this weekend so I won't be able to watch the game. That being said, I'll need a recap asap ;-)

It's an understatement to say this is a big game. Personally, I believe tonight is the champioship game (that's not to say kel couldn't win a game 7, but pressure would be enormous in that situation).


The boys need the best effort of the season from all players. Moreover, they really need the vets to step up both on Def and especially on Offense (which has been lacking with the injury to both Benn and St D).

I've had a strong feeling about game 6 since the start of the series. I'm going to call on some local voodoo experts to see if I can get some positive mojo flowing in the direction of the Rockets.

I look forward to reading your recap from this the sixth and final game of championship series.

Go Rockets.

Unknown said...

any updates on benn's status for tonight? as you said having him back would really boost attitude and give us a big scoring boost,because you have to think he's been sitting there stewing just wanting to get into the games. Got my tickets for tonight and if i don't see something hoisted tonight i'm going to be really concerned..

Regan Bartel said...

Benn is a game time decision. Regardless of if he's in our out, a win is needed.

Unknown said...

benny must be painfully close to returning if he's been a gametime decision since he left.i hope he or somebody can really impact this game,i mean,backlund is amazing,but it's become obvious that he can't do this himself,i'd love to hear the speach huska will lay on the boys tonight. any voodoo update hocus? :)

Sir Loungealot said...

Richard-

I just left Marie Leaveau and Rev. Zombie. Both had success charms which were procurred to further the Rockets in tonight's game. I just hope they didn't think it was the Houston Rockets.

Again, good luck Rockets & of their players.

Unknown said...

allright we are playing for all the marbles lets see some killer instinct from our boys. I would love to see monster hit from grantham and myers and finesse plays snd goals from our top 2 lines if that happen the hitmen will ride in the sunset with their tails between their legs.
good luck boys we are all cheering for ya soooo much!!!!!