weird, I never got paged for this.
But to the above: yeah, the record is 108 by Ray Ferraro as stated earlier.
Ronning didn't play tonight as the Giants rested several big guns in a meaningless final game of the season, so he finishes with 61 goals (I saw #61 on Friday night in a losing effort vs Kelowna) which is good for 2nd in the WHL behind Moose Jaw's Jayden Halbgewachs (undrafted, signed by San Jose) who had 70. His 84 total points put him 24th in the league (again, Halbgewachs led the league with 129).
Halbgewachs' 70 goals was noted as being the first 70-goal WHL season sin 1998-1999 and (I feel your pain on this one..... uuuuuuuuggggghhhhhhh) Pavel Brendl.
If not for Halbgewachs, Ronning's 61 goals would've been the highest the league had seen since 2014-15 and Oliver Bjorkstrand.
He also swept basically every end-of-year award he was eligible for in the Giants' team awards ceremony, nabbing the scoring title, team MVP, +/- leader, graduating player award, humanitarian of the year, player's choice selection, and top 3 in total 3-stars nominations. It got to the point that I was joking that they should've made him just hold onto each trophy/plaque until he received them all and had to hold them up like a big shiny jenga tower while he got off the ice.
So I'll leave the Ronning-watch for the final time in the regular season with this:
The Giants drew the Victoria Royals in the first round of the playoffs. They finished 3 points back of the Royals (84-81) and the Royals took the season series 7-3 (including 2 shootout wins and 1 overtime win. But also a couple of huge blowouts). The schedule will be:
Fri, Mar 23 - Van @ Vic
Sat, Mar 24 - Van @ Vic
Tue, Mar 27 - Vic @ Van
Wed, Mar 28 - Vic @ Van
Sat, Mar 31 - Van @ Vic*
Mon, Apr 2 - Vic @ Van*
Tue, Apr 3 - Van @ Vic*
*If Necessary
I will be at any Giants home games for sure. And I am contemplating springing for the rest of the series to watch online from the WHL Live app.
EDIT: If a poster named "Van" shows up, I apologize. By not putting a space after the @ symbol, these boards now parse it as one of those paging calls automatically. I didn't realize I did that until after I hit the post button.