The Victoria Royals wrap up their 7 game homestand this weekend with a two-game set against their division rivals, the Kamloops Blazers.

Coming off back-to-back defeats at the hands of the Seattle Thunderbirds, it seems this week’s snowpocalypse got in the heads of our young Royals. Now that we’re back to the snowless weather that Victoria is so proud to call normal, perhaps we can continue our march toward playoff supremacy.

Here’s three things to look forward to for this weekend’s set:

These kids are kind of good

The Royals and Blazers have combined to win 13 of their last 20 games, amassing an impressive record of 13-5-1-1. Victoria themselves are 7-3-0 over that span and have averaged nearly 4 goals per game with 38 over that time frame.

With a 4 game road trip beginning right around Love Day, not only will our Royals be ditching their girlfriends, but they’ll also be ditching us, so let’s go give ‘em our support.

Both teams play an attractive, attacking brand of hockey and this weekend’s matchups should be as good as any before we send them off to the treacheries of eastern Alberta.

Ugly Blazer Night

What better way to get into the heads of our opponents than by mocking their team name? I get it- the Thunderbirds are a bit more challenging to mock since they sound completely badass, and no one has a spare “ugly thunderbird” costume laying around.

But Victoria, no one has an excuse this weekend, we’ve all got a blazer laying around, and I’m hearing Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” over and over in my head right now. Let’s give our Royals a competitive edge by showing them how much we want to hurt the opponents’ feelings.

There’s a guy from Duncan on their team!

These hockey games will boast 40 young men from around Western North America (with a dash of Russia and Czech Republic), and we have one singular Vancouver Island representative.

I apologize in advance for writing about those Blazer kids, but Nolan Kneen is a 17-year-old defenseman out of Duncan who has embraced the calling that seeing the world’s largest hockey stick every day implies. He was the third overall pick in the WHL Bantam Draft in 2014 (which is kind of a big deal) and is projected to be a mid-to-late-round pick in this year’s upcoming NHL Draft.

Victoria: Our task is clear. We must somehow walk the fine line of appreciating a local boy chasing his childhood dreams, while still making it very clear that we are hoping his Blazers get absolutely crushed, demolished, and defeated.

Puck drop is 7:05pm for both Friday and Saturday. Purchase your tickets online.