The Peninsula Panthers battled their way through the first round of the Vancouver Island Junior Hockey League playoffs against the Westshore Wolves and began the second round against the Comox Valley Glacier Kings yesterday (Tuesday.)
“I am thrilled we are through the first round of the playoffs,” said Panthers’ owner Pete Zubersky.
“Now we can focus on playing against a skilled Comox club. We are looking to be a lot better than we were in round one and we need to play with more grit and passion.
“We’ve had a couple of great practices in the last several days and feel we’re good to go as a team.”
The Glacier Kings finished tied for second in the VIJHL with the Panthers and dispatched the Saanich Braves in four straight games during the first round of playoffs.
“We believe that some of our success in this series will come down to physicality of our game,” said Zubersky.
“We want to be disciplined and stay out of the box but we also want every single guy on our roster to take the body at every opportunity. We have a big club and we want to play our size, which isn’t a secret. That’s how we built the team and we want to utilize that. Comox is smaller and we feel we can wear them down a bit in a seven-game series. We respect their club very much but we’re also not afraid to compete,” said Zubersky.
The Panthers will be at home at Panorama this Friday evening at 7:30 p.m. for game two in the series and will jump on the bus the following afternoon for a Saturday evening game in Comox.
Game four will take place back at Panorama Recreation Centre Monday night (March 10) at 7:30 p.m.