Giants Thump Blazers 5-1; Pick up 30th Win of Season

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WHL Vancouver Giants

Giants Thump Blazers 5-1; Pick up 30th Win of Season

March 9, 2025 - Western Hockey League (WHL)
Vancouver Giants News Release


Vancouver Giants battle the Kamloops Blazers
Vancouver Giants battle the Kamloops Blazers
(Vancouver Giants, Credit: Brian Johnson)

Kamloops, B.C. - Two goals from Ty Halaburda and 33 saves from Burke Hood helped the Vancouver Giants pick up their 30th win of the season on Saturday night, after they defeated the Kamloops Blazers 5-1 at the Sandman Centre.

The win improves Vancouver's record this season to 30-24-8-0, while Kamloops drops to 22-35-4-1. The Giants remain two points back of Portland for fifth place in the Western Conference, but they are now just one point behind Tri-City for sixth. Each of the three teams has six games remaining.

In addition to Halaburda's 25th and 26th goals of the season, Jaden Lipinski (15th), Connor Levis (22nd) and Cameron Schmidt (35th) also scored. Meanwhile Hood now holds a .947 save percentage in his last four starts.

Oren Shtrom broke Hood's shutout bid with 1:12 remaining in the game, providing the only Blazers goal of the evening.

The Blazers had the early pressure, but some saves from Hood and a big penalty kill kept the score deadlocked 0-0 through the first half of the period.

With just under seven minutes remaining, the Giants scored the game's first goal with the man advantage, after Schmidt threw a puck to the net form the right circle that went off Halaburda and in.

Just 25 seconds later, the Giants made it 2-0 after Lipinski tucked home a loose puck at the side of the net.

The second period saw Kamloops fight back and get some good looks, but the score remained 2-0 after they hit a couple cross bars.

With under five minutes remaining in the second, Schmidt fed Levis a pass from behind the net to the left circle, which Levis quickly snapped on net for the all-important third goal. It was Levis' 98th career goal and his seventh against his former team in seven games this season.

At the 6:59 mark of the third period, Schmidt would break an 11-game goalless drought when he came out from the net and beat Dylan Ernst with a spin-o-rama shot for his 35th of the season.

Halaburda extended the Giants lead to 5-0 just past the halfway mark of the third period after a Blazers turnover in their own zone led to a loose puck in the slot, which Halaburda stepped into after coming off the bench.

With 72 seconds left in the hockey game, Shtrom would score on a 2-on-1 shorthanded to make the final score 5-1.

SOG: VAN - 10/14/14 = 38 | KAM - 15/9/10= 34

PP: VAN- 1/2 | KAM - 0 /4

Face-Offs: VAN - 26 | KAM - 30 3 STARS

1st: VAN - Burke Hood - 33 Saves on 34 Shots

2nd: VAN - Ty Halaburda - 2G, 1A, 2 SOG, +3

3rd: KAM - Jordan Keller - 4 SOG GOALTENDING BATTLE

Vancouver: WIN - Burke Hood (33 saves / 34 shots)

Kamloops: LOSS - Dylan Ernst (33 saves / 38 shots) THEY SAID IT

"I liked how we got better as the game went along. I thought our third period was our best by far. Just liked how we stuck with it. You could tell in the start maybe things weren't going our way, but we didn't waver. We just stuck to the plan and got better each period...I thought we had trouble getting out clean and then some early penalties and the bench gets a little shorter there, when there's penalties, obviously it kills momentum a bit. But I really liked how we responded. We started to play a lot faster. I thought we were just a little slow, legs and head speed, in the first and that picked up in the second and even more in the third." - Associate Coach Adam Maglio on the game overall

"We were just playing faster. We were quicker with the puck. Decisions and we were getting way better puck support, all over the ice: d-zone, neutral zone and o-zone. One thing I liked tonight - it's not going to show in the stats - but we really established, we went back to a really good forecheck game. I just thought guys were committed to putting pucks low when there weren't plays, when we didn't have odd-man rushes, and we got a lot of pucks back off the forecheck, created some good chances low to high." - Associate Coach Adam Maglio on the third period

UPCOMING

The Giants host the Prince George Cougars on Sunday afternoon at 4:00 p.m. PST at the LEC.

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Images from this story

Vancouver Giants battle the Kamloops Blazers
Vancouver Giants battle the Kamloops Blazers
(Brian Johnson)		   

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