The Ridge Meadows Flames have swept the Chilliwack Jets to advance to the Stonehouse Cup series.
The Flames are in the Pacific Junior Hockey League championship series for the third straight season, and have now gone a perfect 16-0 against the rugged Jets team over four playoff seasons.
The two teams had split their regular season games with two wins apiece, and finished first and second in the PJHL regular season standings. So nobody was predicting yet another short series in this year's Harold Brittain Conference final.
"Chilliwack is a heck of a hockey team. They won 39 games this year," said Flames GM Derek Bedard. "We knew the path to the final went through Chilliwack."
He was proud of his team after they finished off the series with a 6-2 win at the Sardis Sports Complex on March 11, for a remarkable 16th straight against the Jets.
"With this group of players nothing surprises me, with the commitment and buy-in from this group," said Bedard.
They are the reigning Stonehouse Cup champions, having beaten the Richmond Sockeyes in the championship series last year.
The year before they played for the trophy, but lost to the Delta Ice Hawks in seven games, in a game-seven overtime heart-breaker.
They will play either Delta or Richmond again this year, as they play in the Tom Shaw Conference championship, with Delta winning the first three games of the series.
Pierce Whyte was the player of the game with two goals on Tuesday, while the second and third stars Nolan Bowsher and Zack Lagrange each had a goal and an assist.
Chilliwack got the first goal of the game, for the third straight contest, but the Flames tied it 2-2 after the first period, and then took over.
Bedard said his team's power play punished Chilliwack's often borderline physical play, and the resulting penalties, with 13 goals through four games
"Then everybody stepped up," said Bedard. "Our foot soldiers, the guys who don't get all the points, were tremendous."
Head coach Brent Hughes said the line of Whyte, Joshua Bettesworth and Jacob Roche were instrumental in the win, as they shut down Chilliwack's elite Ukrainian players. Their star Nikita Kulikov scored 12 points in his first four-game series, but could muster only two against the Flames.
"That line really held down Chilliwack's top line," said Hughes.
In the tough series rookie forward James Eagle suffered a broken collarbone that will end his season, Jacob Douglas suffered a broken nose, and two other players were sidelined with suspected concussions.
"We didn't back down," said Hughes. "They came at us hard, but we kept coming at them."
The Flames have three players among the top five in the league in playoff scoring after nine games: Theo Kochan (19 points), Lagrange (17) and Bowsher (16).
Veteran goaltender Matthew Candusso has had a great playoffs, winning all seven of his games, posting three shutouts, stopping 96 per cent of shots faced, and posting a goals against average of just 1.22 per game.
Now the Flames will get a break, and a chance to ice some aches and recharge mentally, before the Stonehouse Cup.
A schedule for the league championship series will be released when it is available.
A win in that series would return the Flames to the Mowat Cup, B.C. championship. For the first time since the Kootenay International Junior Hockey League (KIJHL) and the Pacific Junior Hockey League (PJHL) transitioned to Junior A Tier 2, their respective league champions will square off in a best-of-five series for the Mowat Cup in April.
