Long Wait Almost Over For Grizzlies:

This is in the Victoria Times Colonist:

Long wait almost over for Grizzlies

By Sharie Epp, Times ColonistMay 1, 2009

The Victoria Grizzlies have seen plenty of the RBC Cup trophy in the last few weeks, they just haven’t touched it. The Grizzlies will wait until they have earned the right to hold the Cup, a challenge that begins on Saturday at Bear Mountain Arena.
Opening ceremonies of the five-team national Junior A hockey championship are set for 5 p.m., followed by the opening game between the Grizzlies and the Vernon Vipers, the B.C. and Pacific region champs.
Milling around the silver cup, the Grizzlies were at the RBC branch in Colwood on Friday for their final promotional event.
Forward Tyler Gubb said they didn’t get a thrill from just seeing the Cup anymore.
“It would be more exciting to pick it up,” Gubb said.
As host team, the Grizzlies have been waiting an entire season for the RBC Cup tournament, which features a round-robin, Saturday to Thursday, semifinals on Friday, a banquet next Saturday with the championship final on Sunday, May 10.
The other teams vying to hoist the trophy are the Humboldt Broncos, the West regional champ from Saskatchewan, the Central region’s Kingston, Ont., Voyageurs, and the Summerside, P.E.I., Western Capitals, winners in the East region of the Canadian Junior Hockey League.
“The music’s pumping, and we’re just getting ready to go,” said Tyler Matheson, talking about the mood in Victoria’s dressing room. “I’m pretty excited about being able to play.”
The big Victoria forward ruptured his spleen at the end of the regular season. The doctors gave him the go-ahead just as the regular-season champion Grizzlies were knocked out of the B.C. Hockey League playoffs by Powell River in Game 7 of the Coastal Conference final.
“To be honest, I think everyone has come together a lot more, because they know we should have gone farther in the playoffs,” Matheson said.
“It was kind of like a letdown to our fans as well as ourselves.”
Matheson, who played defence part of the season, has been moved back up front on a line with Evan Pighin and Trever Hertz. The Grizzlies coaches decided to shuffle lines at the beginning of their month-long break from competition, spreading out the depth on the bench, with a solid backing of from the defence.
“We don’t have to put our eggs in one basket with this team,” assistant coach Craig Didmon said.
The only trio remaining intact is the one that includes captain Brian Nugent, Jonathan Milhouse, and Derek Lee. That line produced 34 points in two rounds of playoffs. The other combos include Justin Courtnall, Dustin Mowrey and Teal Burns, and the workhorse trio of Gubb, Cody Bremner and Myles MacRae.
Pitted against each other through the long days of practice, the Grizzlies have had battles nearly as heated as game days.
Now the waiting is over, and it’s time for the real thing.
“It’s in our hearts and our dreams,” Matheson said. “We really want to win this Cup.”