Coquitlam, BC – At just about the same time on Wednesday night that Surrey Eagles goaltender Tommy Scarfone stopped the Coquitlam Express’ leading scorer Greg Lapointe on a penalty shot with eight minutes to play in Surrey’s 3-1 victory over the B.C. Hockey League’s regular season champions on their home ice, the Chilliwack Chiefs surrendered a late goal at home and dropped a 5-4 decision to the Salmon Arm Silverbacks. The results allowed the red-hot Eagles to leapfrog over the Chiefs and into second place in the Mainland Division.
The win was Surrey’s eighth in their past 10 games, and they can clinch second place and home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs against the Chiefs with a win at home on Friday night against the Langley Rivermen in their last game of the regular season.
“It was amazing to win in a rink that not many teams win in,” said Eagles head coach Cam Keith of the victory. And of the team’s shocking surge up the standings after spending the first third of the season mired in the division basement, he admitted, “Even as coaches we’re continually getting surprised here. I don’t think anyone really thought this was a possibility. We talked about [finishing second] as a goal, especially after once we got clear of Langley, but we had to absolutely run the table. We won a lot of four-point games against Chilliwack, and now we’ve got to the spot where it’s in our hands. But I have to say this was the toughest one. Every game we’ve played here this year it’s been the Coquitlam show.”
For the third time in their past four games, the Eagles starting goalie was named the game’s first star, and Keith was quick to tip his hat to the rookie netminder. “You have to give most of the credit tonight to Tommy Scarfone. He made some amazing saves especially in the first period to keep it where it was after the first. On the penalty shot, there was nothing for [Lapointe] to shoot at, Tommy did a good job of coming out and challenging and then closed down the deke. That was obviously a huge, huge lift.”
Scarfone made 14 of his 30 saves in opening 20 minutes to keep the game scoreless, and Keith was pleased with his team’s overall grit. “I thought we defended really well. In the first, it took a bit for us to adjust to the time and space on the smaller ice surface, but once we did I thought we kept it really simple, and limited their chances. We competed extremely hard and put in some hard shifts. We did the things we needed to do to not let their offense get fully in gear.”
Surrey played minus defenseman Jimmy Darby and forwards Kenny Riddett and Adamo Santia. Keith shifted forward Carter King into the middle between Sean Ramsay and Brandon Santa Juana, and the line clicked. King scored the game-winner early in the third period, less than a minute after Coquitlam had tied the score 1-1, as well as the clincher into the empty net with 12 seconds to play.
“I thought that was our best line tonight. I used Carter at center a few games earlier in the year, and thought he did a really good job. I thought this would be a good game for him there because there’s not a lot of skating room and he’s really good defensively. It gave us four solid centerman so we could just keep rolling our lines and not worry about matchups.”
Surrey’s Wyatt Schlaht scored the game’s first goal in the second period, as the team’s top line of captain Hudson Schandor, Cristophe Tellier and Gabe Schovanek were all held off the scoresheet for one of the few times since Keith put them together as unit in late November.
“Goaltending has carried us through our streak, but our secondary scoring has also really been a big factor,” said Keith. “Guys like King, Riddett, Schlaht, [Christian] Fitzgerald, their emergence has given us a balanced attack so other teams can’t focus on just one line. In those games where our top line was maybe sputtering the other lines carried the momentum and given us an attack where we’ve been wearing teams down more than we were before.”
As the rest of the league is now most certainly aware.
