‘We Were Closer Than It Looked’: Inside Bruce Hamilton’s Playoff Autopsy

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“Good question,” Hamilton said when asked by RocketFAN to evaluate the playoffs. “I felt that in the opening series with Kamloops, we were what we are. I think we played the way we needed to play to finish that off.”

The Rockets eliminated the 5th-seeded Blazers in four straight games, with elite goaltending from Harrison Boettiger and strong play from Tij Iginla and Vojtech Cihar.

That part made sense to him. The Rockets played to their identity. They were direct, physical, and hard to play against, and it worked.

The second round was different.

“In the Everett series, I thought the first two games down there, we were closer than the score indicated,” Hamilton said after 4-1 and 4-2 losses. “I think our style of play probably got their [referees] attention a little more than we expected.”

It is a point he came back to more than once.

“I just felt we were closer than it ended up,” he said despite his team scoring just 9 goals in five games. “I don’t think it was a mismatch. That had all the makings of a seven-game series. I am positive Everett is glad it’s not seven games.”

Hamilton believed in how his team was built.

“When we started building this team, I wanted a big, heavy group that could play in the playoffs and not run out of gas,” he said. “I felt that’s what we had.”

The Rockets, statistically, had the biggest team in the WHL, averaging 6’2 and weighing 194 pounds. By age, only the Penticton Vees were older.

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But over the course of the series, things shifted.

“I think we were closer than people think,” Hamilton said. “But we didn’t get going the way we needed to get going.”

There were other factors, too. Some were self-inflicted.

“We put ourselves in that box,” he said. “I think we would have felt a lot more comfortable if we had finished ahead of Prince George and played Penticton. Travel and everything that goes with it would have been a lot better.”

That path was there late in the regular season.

It slipped.

“You look at the losses to Wenatchee and Vancouver, those were costly in the end,” Hamilton said. “Those are issues we dealt with.”

The Rockets finished in fourth place in the Western Conference, just five points back of the third-place Prince George Cougars.

The Rockets led the league in fights during the regular season. They played on the edge, and that reputation followed them.

“I think our reputation carried over,” Hamilton admitted. “Officials were kind of looking for us.”

He stopped there.

“I’m the last guy to blame the referees,” he added.

But in reality, in his view, the Rockets were not always able to play the way they were built to play. And when that changed, they did not adjust quickly enough.

There was also something missing, Hamilton pointed out.

“When you look at the group we put together, we didn’t really have a lead dog,” he said. “Carson [Wetsch] was the captain, but he wasn’t from here. It’s important to me that somebody from within your organization, who has been there for years, understands the culture and everything that goes into it.”

Hamilton made it clear that it was not a criticism of his captain.

“He did everything he could,” he said. “But those are the kind of guys, like Josh Gorges, that make things happen and get things done.”

Hiroki Gojsic is one of the few players who fit that description. The longest-tenured Rocket joined the team at the start of the 2023-24 season. The forward turns 20 on May 1 and has played 184 career games, all with Kelowna.

In the end, Hamilton kept coming back to one thought.

“I don’t think it was as far apart as people think,” he said about this team forcing the Tips into overtime in the final two games of the series.

“But we didn’t get going the way we needed to get going.”

Part 2 will look at Bruce Hamilton’s comments on habits, accountability, and what he called “independent operators” – something that has to get cleaned up before May.