To nobody’s surprise, the Westlock Senior ‘A’ Warriors swept their best-of-five playoff series with the Whitecourt Wild on Saturday night, clinching a spot in the North Central Hockey League (NCHL) championship.
Before a sizeable Rotary Spirit Centre crowd, the Warriors defeated the Whitecourt Wild 5-2 and won the semifinal series 3-0.
Westlock previously won games 1 and 2, 9-4 on Feb. 21 and 9-1 on Feb. 21.
Though the Warriors held a lead throughout most of the match, Saturday’s home game was a tenser affair, particularly in the second period.
Coach Joe Kuhar said they knew this third game wouldn’t be easy, if only because Whitecourt was bringing in some players that had been absent from the first two matches.
That, and the fact that the third game “is never easy,” said Kuhar, likening it to being up two goals after the first period.
“That’s not a good feeling; you’d rather like to be three goals up,” he added.
There was also a little added pressure among the Warriors to win the series before a hometown crowd, and perhaps some of the boys missed shots that they normally would have sunk, he said.
That said, even when things got a little dicey in the second period, Kuhar said the Warriors were never too worried.
“We pressured them hard, we kept on them,” he said. “At the end of the day, that was what made the difference. It was a whole team effort.”
The Warriors were up 1-0 in the first period after Alex Belzevick scored an early goal off assists by Brett Wold and Gord Bell.
Nothing happened for the remainder of the first period, but Nathan Brown widened Westlock’s lead with two goals in the second period, assisted by Tanner Sohn and then Mason Lyle.
Whitecourt also scored a goal that period, and both teams ran into penalty trouble. Nonetheless, goalie Chris Kuhar stood strong in the net despite Westlock being down two men at one point.
In the third period, Dave Nimmo put Westlock up 4-1 less than three minutes in, assisted by Wold. Whitecourt fired back several minutes later with their own goal.
However, the Wild could never battle back, and in the last two minutes emptied their net to try and score another goal. That came to a swift end when Nimmo scored with 14 seconds left, assisted by Mike Ivey and Bell.
Westlock must now await the outcome of a best-of-five series between Morinville and Devon to see who they will face in the championship.
Devon defeated Morinville in Game 1 of the series on Feb. 21, but Morinville made a huge comeback this weekend, downing Devon 7-3 on Friday and 6-2 on Saturday.
Kuhar said they believe the championship series will likely begin sometime around Friday, March 13, but it depends on how long the Morinville-Devon series runs.
