As a hockey fan, it feels like Victoria is recovering from a hangover.

With two big tickets in town, the Victoria Salmon Kings should be the first option, but lately the local junior A team has been the hot ticket.

The Tier 2 professional Salmon Kings have come out playing the type of hockey that could use a run through the dry-cleaners, let alone a shot of Febreeze.

Across town at Bear Mountain Arena, hockey fans are being treated to a completely revamped Victoria Grizzlies squad. Gone is the most talented team in the B.C. Hockey League, one built to win the junior A national championship, the Royal Bank Cup. In its place is a completely new team, one that’s entertaining in every way hockey can be.

The Grizzlies hit, fight, block shots and score. It’s what junior A hockey is known for. It’s what the ECHL is expected to be.

But for Victoria’s two top hockey teams, the story out of the gates for the 2009-10 season is a role reversal.

The Salmon Kings are last in the ECHL and I for one, want to see a little more passion out of the Kings.

Three wins in 13 games is not good enough for the lone Canadian ECHL team. As an analyst, it’s easy to sit back as an armchair general manager and say, if Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke says his team needs to play with truculence, then so do the Salmon Kings.

As one press box voice put it, the Kings are the worst kind of bad, a “soft bad.”

Scraps, donnybrooks and old-time goons – has anyone seen the Hanson brothers? – are what’s missing. Especially for fans.

Because it isn’t fights necessarily, it’s what the fights are backing up.

Mike Hamilton, a former Victoria Racquet Club King and junior B Peninsula Panther, has been one of the more physical players on the Salmon Kings this season. His humble, team-first attitude couldn’t hide the honest truth. That the Kings need to be physical and need a better all-around effort.

“Physical play is huge,” he said. “You wear the other team out, you throw a lot of hits early in the game. And next time they get the puck, they’re thinking they’re going to get hit, and they might not make the play they normally would, or that their time and space is cut down.

“We have to do that to be effective – have to be hitting – but it’s still hard to pinpoint one thing. But we have to be more physical, among other things.”

As an analyst, I find it hard to say fighting is the No. 1 ingredient the Salmon Kings are lacking. We all know it’s not an easy thing to do and, from rugby to football, fellow athletes give those who fight in hockey a glittering respect.

But it’s time to acknowledge that TSN’s weekly replays include fights too. Society has long accepted it, but I still believe it’s something fans should have a right to appreciate, but not ask for.

Over in the Grizzlies camp, first-year coach and interim general manager Victor Gervais traded the rights to five players for Brad Pawlowski prior to the season. In case you need an update, Pawlowski has become the most exciting player in the BCHL. The 20-year-old defenceman from Ontario scored a hat trick in the Grizzlies’ recent 10-5 drubbing of the Langley Chiefs. He has as many fights as he does goals, seven.

When the 6-foot-3, 220 pound defenceman plays, cheap shots towards the Grizzlies are non-existent, says Gervais.

Grizzlies captain Jordan Heywood agrees.

“It’s great to see in chippy games when guys are answering for each other, whether it’s Pawlowski jumping in or whether it’s a first year player,” he said. “It’s almost more inspiring to see the first-year player do it because you know Pawlowski’s going to do it.”

Does having a scrappy team make fans happy? There’s no doubt about that, or fighting wouldn’t be a part of hockey.

Even the courts say it’s a part of the game, as former Salmon King Robin Gomez discovered when he was found not guilty in a spring-time decision for his punch on a visiting player the year before.

The Grizzlies are home this Saturday (Nov. 21) at 7:15 p.m. against the Merritt Centennials and Sunday at 4:30 p.m. against the Westside Warriors.

The Salmon Kings next return home to play the Idaho Steelheads on Dec. 10.

Travis Paterson is South Island sports reporter for Black Press.

sports@vicnews.com