KENNEWICK — The Tri-City Americans have the Victoria Royals at home tonight, but there’s a couple of items from last night worthy of mentioning.
With his two goals, Justin Feser hit the century mark, and Adam Hughesman played his 316th game, moving past Kruise Reddick (315) into sixth place on the all-time games played list.
The Americans beat Seattle 4-1 on Friday, with Justin Feser scoring a pair of empty-net goals in the final minute.
The Royals skated away with a 5-4 victory when they last visited Toyota Center on Oct. 25. The win gave the Royals their eighth win of the season. Since then, they have gone 9-24-2-4.
Victoria is coming off a 6-5 shootout loss to Spokane on Friday. The Royals rallied from a 5-2 deficit to tie the game and earn a point.
Royals RW Ben Walker, who left high school hockey in Minnesota to play in the WHL, finished the month of January with eight points in 11 games. He had two assists against Spokane, and has 6 goals and 22 points in 27 games. This will be Tri-City’s first look at the speedy forward.
Ty Rimmer is in goal for the Americans, with Mason Wilgosh, Justin Hamonic, Malte Strömwall, and Marcus Messier on the scratch list.
Keith Hamilton is in net for Victoria, while Zach Habscheid, Tyler Stahl, Austin Carroll and Tayler Crunk are on the scratch list.
A treat tonight — Andy Thiessen is one of two referees. Andy has cut back his WHL schedule to ref at upper levels. He is paired with Jeff Ingram tonight.
Puck drops in 15. Still time to join the fun.
----------------
I gave Mason Wilgosh a chance to ghost write the action of the first period, but he had writer's block.
The game is scoreless, but not for a lack of effort. The Americans outshot the Royals 15-13, and killed off all three Victoria power plays.
-----------------
The game turned into a scoring frenzy in the second.
The Royals took a 2-0 with goals by Jesse Crooks at 1:51 and Brandon Magee at 10:13, only to see the Americans storm back with goals by Sam Grist, Zach Yuen and Brendan Shinnimin to take a 3-0 lead.
Tri-City continued to pour it on in the third with goals by Jesse Mychan and two by Adam Hughesman for a 6-2 lead. Victoria would get a late goal by Jesse Zgraggen, but the game was already out of hand.
The Americans are at Kamloops on Wednesday for a showdown for first place in the Western Conference.
