There are not many teams these days that can stop the Valley West Hawks.
When you’re looking at teams in the BCMML, the Hawks are the cream of the crop.
Their 6-2 victory over the Vancouver NE Chiefs on Tuesday night left them atop of the standings in the 11-team league. Even with the victory, head coach Rob Evers wasn’t completely pleased with their performance.
“We still gave up too many shots,” said Evers post-game. “We did a good job of keeping most of those shots to the outside, but that’s still an area of our game we want to clean up.”
Evers did have a strong performance from goalie Josh Dias, who is now 9-1-1 on the season. Dias made an absolute beauty of a save in the third period to preserve the Hawks already insurmountable lead.
“He’s had a great season for us,” said Evers. “He’s not getting enough love for the season he’s had.”
#WATCH highlights from last night's win vs NEChiefs #DiasSave #🤢🤢🤢 @LangleyEvents https://t.co/FSCS7XVHUB
— Valley West Hawks (@vwhawks) November 15, 2017
Aside from goaltending, offence is another obvious strength for the Hawks.
If you thought six goals was an above average performance for the Hawks, think again. They lead the league with 85 goals in 15 games, for an average of 5.67 goals per game.
With the talent currently on this team, players in the dressing room know that it’s time for the organization to make a push for a championship.
“Anything short of a championship is a waste of a season for our team,” said forward Max Mohagen after the game.”We have a deep team and hopefully we go a long ways.”
The Valley West Hawks last won the league championship in 2015-16. In a league that sees a lot of turnover based on the age group, they have only one remaining player, Kabir Gill, from the team that won in 2017-18.
Now that the Hawks are led by a completely different group of players, it’s encouraging to see the scouting and coaching from Evers paying off once again.
Evers was an assistant during the championship season in 2015-16, but he will look to lead the Hawks to their second championship in three seasons as head coach this time.
trevor.beggs@surreynowleader.com
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