The St. Albert Raiders march into the midget AAA provincials after knocking off the Leduc Oil Kings, the host team for the Telus Cup national championship.
Kevin Miller converted a second-period power play and Wyatt Hoflin stopped 36 shots in Sunday’s 1-0 playoff thriller against the Oil Kings in St. Albert to win the best-of-five north final in four games.
“Our compete level was as high as it’s ever been. We wanted to end the series. We didn’t want to go back to Leduc to play that deciding game,” said head coach Sandro Pisani. “We scored a timely power-play goal, our penalty kill did a great job again of keeping them to the outside and obviously Wyatt was very strong in net for us.”
The Raiders will now challenge the two-time defending champion Red Deer Rebels for provincial honours. The best-of-five playoff starts Friday in Red Deer at 8 p.m. Game two is Sunday at 2 p.m. at Akinsdale Arena. Game three is Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Red Deer.
If needed, game four is Friday at 8 p.m. at Akinsdale and game five is Sunday at 3 p.m. in Red Deer.
The winner will host the pacific regional series April 6-8 against the British Columbia champion.
The last St. Albert team to win provincials was the 1990 Raiders, who finished fourth that year at nationals.
“Everyone is really excited with what’s ahead of us. They can see what we can achieve, but we can’t let our emotions get the best of us. We have to kind of stay at an even keel,” Hoflin said.
The Rebels finished first in the south with a league-high 25 wins and 53 points and the Raiders placed second in the north with 21 wins and 46 points.
The Rebels were also the top defensive team with 74 goals-against, nine less than the No. 2-ranked Raiders.
“They seem almost kind of similar to us. They don’t allow many goals so if we really do a good job on defence and maybe score a couple I think we’ll have success in the series,” Hoflin said.
In November the Rebels battled back from a 3-2 deficit late in the game to win 4-3 in St. Albert. The next week in Red Deer the Raiders lost 4-1.
“They’re a very well coached team and very well structured,” said Pisani. “Their back end is very mobile and very active in the play and defensively sound. They’ve had four shutouts [in seven playoff games] so they play a real sound tight game. They don’t give you a lot.”
The road to provincials the last two years for the Raiders ended in the north semifinal with playoff losses to Leduc in overtime in the fifth and deciding games.
“Obviously getting through the north is always a challenge because there are so many quality teams. Leduc always seems to be standing in the way of us getting through and it was nice to finally get over that hurdle,” Pisani said. “The kids were very aware of, if you want to call them struggles or what have you at this time of the year, and they really wanted to send a message this year.
“We’ve also talked about trying to push forward and take this program to another level. They really wanted to be a big part of that and to their credit they played like they wanted to take this program forward.”
Leduc edged the Raiders twice by 1-0 scores in league play en route to finishing first in the north, five points ahead of St. Albert.
“Beating them gives you a lot more belief and confidence in yourselves, especially seeing how successful they were this year and last year,” Hoflin said.
In the opening game the Oil Kings gassed a two-goal lead in the third period and lost 3-2 in Leduc. The next game Leduc wilted again in the last period and lost 5-3 in St. Albert.
Friday in game three in Leduc the Raiders slipped a notch against a desperate team and lost 7-3.
“Even though we lost everyone seemed to have a positive outlook on that game, knowing that it was just a little bump in the road. We still had confidence we could win the next one,” said Hoflin.
After getting pulled in the third with Leduc up 5-1 in game three, the second-year Raider rebounded to post his second shutout in eight straight playoff starts.
“It felt really good but towards the end I got a little nervous,” said the Grade 11 Memorial Composite High School student. “We played more defensive than offensive and our defence did a really good job of letting me see the puck. It’s really good when you see your team working hard in front of you and you can kind of pay them back by giving them that support and confidence to know that they can score one and you’re going to stop them all.”
