Winless on the road this season, the Save-On-Foods Oceanside Generals will look to end that trend with back-to-back road games, starting tonight in Nanaimo against the Buccaneers.
It’s been 41 games and with just seven to go, the Gens are hoping to end their season–long winless skid. In their eight meetings this season, the Gens have managed one win and one tie, with two games left.
“If we can keep up our consistent play, we’ll be right there,” head coach Rob Gaudreault said.
“We need to try and limit our trips to the penalty box and just build off the way we’ve been playing since the Christmas break. It’s been tough for us but we feel like we’re right there and we’re ready to break through.”
With the season winding down, the Generals are looking at a potential match at the end to draw into the VIJHL playoffs. Before that, with the way this team has been playing, anything can happen.
“We’ve been keeping up with most teams we play against,” Gaudreault said. “It’s just a matter of our discipline being where it needs to be and our guys playing for a full 60 minutes. Things have been going pretty well as of late, we haven’t been taking too many penalties and it’s helped us keep our minds in the game a lot more.”
The second of three games for the Gens this week will take place on Friday night, when they travel to Victoria to take on the Peninsula Panthers.
In their three meetings this season, the Generals have won one game, with their second loss to the Panthers coming 12 days earlier when they had a 3-2 lead with five minutes to play in the third period and wound up losing 4-3.
“I love it when we’ve got a busy week,” forward Jordan Bautista said.
“It keeps you distracted and doesn’t really leave a lot of time in between to worry about things that might have gone wrong. You can build on things you did right and have a chance to correct those things that you didn’t do right the next day, so it’s nice to have three games in a row like this.”
Saturday night the Gens are back home to host the Saanich Braves for their last match of the season.
The Generals have one win in three tries so far against the Braves this season and will look to end the season series with another victory. Puck drops at
7 p.m. at Oceanside Place.