Penticton Vees won their 42nd BCHL game in a row Friday night

The last time that the Penticton Vees visited the Prince George Spruce Kings back in October, the British Columbian Junior A team was on a modest hot streak, having won the first five games of the 2011-12 regular season. They were in town for Friday and Saturday affairs and ended up splitting the series.

How things have changed. A shot by Spruce King Michael Colanone with less than a second to go in the double overtime period (yes, regular season double overtime, the BCHL plays five minutes of four-on-four and five minutes of three-on-three) beat Vee goalie Chad Katunar for a rare loss by Penticton.

This time around, things were a little different. The Vees were again on a hot streak riding into Prince George, this one 41 games long, a streak that with every successive win in their last ten games were merely adding to their own, probably unbreakable record for consecutive wins by a Canadian junior team.

Not since early November has any team (the Merritt Centennials) stopped the Vees, as they avenged their early October defeat with an 8-5 smashing of the Spruce Kings. Mario Lucia, the speedy rookie winger straight out of the U.S. National Development squad and Minnesota Wild draft pick, had a hat-trick and an assist. Everybody knew around BC, with the streak having been mentioned in nightly newscasts and the Twitter feeds of radio stations, that the Vees had extended their streak, which is odd in a province where you can't find Junior A hockey coverage unless you actively seek it out.

It doesn't take a math whiz to understand that they've benefit from some luck during this streak, but the routine dismantling of opponents' defence leaves no dispute as to who the dominant force is in the BCHL. The average team in the 16-team league, not including Penticton, score 3.3 goals per game. The Vees have averaged 5.6 this season, and during the streak, 6 goals.

During the streak, the team has scored 250 goals for and 77 goals against. Even the stingiest fan of Bill James will tell you that Penticton has earned at least 38 wins during the stretch, which is absolutely outstanding. They've only won six games by a goal, games which are a little more random and subject to some positive coin-flipping, but have won by three or more 31 times. They've victimized teams for nine goals seven times and ten goals twice, only having to resort to two overtime wins, games that would have stopped the streak before it became a record if they were subject to an unlucky bounce.

It's become a routine, game after game after game, If you look at the league leaders in points, nine of the 20 players on the first page are Penticton, and seven of the top nine as well: Captain Joey Benik, who scored the 10-0 dagger in Penticton's 41st win, which gave them 53 on the year, also a Canadian Junior A record. Lucia, Wade Murphy, Travis St. Denis, Connor Reilly and Stephen Fogarty are players all with 30 goals and 80 points in just 59 games so far this season. Defenceman Mike Reilly, Connor's younger brother, both are from Chanhassen, Minnesota and committed to the state's Golden Gophers, has an Erik Karlsson-like grip on the league's defensive scoring leaders, to the tune of 83 points to the next challenger's 59.

The road to the RBC Cup for Canada's top Junior A club is subject to the odd bounce or fluke, but the Vees have shown to be the definite class of the BCHL and it will take a lot more than a few hops or a hot goalie to beat them. The streak will end at some point, but what's impressive about this right now is not that a team has won 42 straight, but by the absolute dominance of the team in those 42 games.

For the first home win in the streak, a 9-3 win against the Trail Smoke Eaters, there were 1431 fans in attendance. Their last home game of the regular season against the same Smoke Eaters, the 10-0 dismantling that set the 53-win record, the team drew 3655.