The Regina Pats have been gifted enough to get away with living dangerously by falling behind in their past two playoff series.
Of course, now that the Pats and league MVP Sam Steel are in the WHL final against the Seattle Thunderbirds, the margin for error should be considerably reduced. But by having to climb out of those early deficits, Regina has tapped into the imagination of southern Saskatchewan’s sports fans and shown it has some jam to back up an attack whose 353 goals were the most by a Western league team since 1996.
Seattle, meantime, might have to try to slow Regina down without the full services of WHL defenceman of the year Ethan Bear (EDM), who has a hand/wrist injury. That doesn’t sound promising, but please keep in mind the Thunderbirds have rolled on despite losing 300-plus man games lost to injuries and world junior championship-related absenteeism.
With MVP runner-up Mathew Barzal (NYI), Ryan Gropp (NYR) and Keegan Kolesar (CLB) as the elders up front, Seattle is a coolly efficient team. There is some recent precedent resting with the Thunderbirds, who lost to the Brandon Wheat Kings in the 2016 final. Four of the WHL’s last seven champions were the runner-up the previous season. That seems like a coincidence, but it’s also a reminder that the final is a different animal than the first three rounds, involving the wrinkle of air travel between the Prairies and the West Coast.
(Granted, for the Thunderbirds, it’s actually a shorter trip than Brandon in 2016.)
Regina hosts Games 1 and 2 on Friday and Saturday in the first leg of a 2-3-2 format. Without further ado, here are some of the more intriguing matchups:
1) Barzal vs. Brooks (who provides more of an emotional lift)
One shared trait between the teams: game breakers who went through the first-world problem of going from high-end scorer to helplessly watching due to a health issue, but have come back and had a knack for the timely goal.
Barzal missed Seattle’s first series due to illness. The most valuable player award runner-up has 17 points across 10 games since returning, including a goal that gave Seattle sufficient cushion during its Game 6 win against Kelowna last Sunday. Overage centre Adam Brooks (TOR), who was shelved by a leg injury during the second round, has four game-winning goals among his 18 points in the playoffs.
2) Steel vs. strength in numbers
It is hard to be playing in May without being loaded with quality centres. Regina has the luxury of having the league’s two most recent scoring champions in the middle and Wyatt Sloboshan has filled the void that was created when Jake Leschyshyn, a near point-a-game scorer on the third line, suffered a season-ending injury on Feb. 3.
That said, Seattle has a good variety down the middle with Barzal as the playmaker, Alexander True as the second-line centre and overage Scott Eansor forming the fulcrum of a checking line. In collective experience, certainly, the T-Birds’ troika compares favourably with their Regina counterparts.
If Regina wins, Steel would be the first WHL MVP to also win a league championship since present-day Edmonton Oilers defenceman Kris Russell did so with the 2007 Medicine Hat Tigers.
3) The Pats’ offence vs. Seattle’s back end
As long as Bear is out or limited, everyone on Seattle’s defence has to move up one rung on the depth chart. The likes of Aaron Hyman, Turner Ottenbreit and Austin Strand capably managed the extra work during the clinching wins in the Western Conference final. First-year contributor Reese Harsch also handled extra shifts, including penalty-kill work.
Regina has a loaded lineup up front, with scoring threats which include (but are in no way limited to) Brooks, Steel, Filip Ahl (OTT), Nick Henry, Dawson Leedahl, Austin Wagner (LAK) and Wyatt Sloboshan. Depth often wins the day.
4) Hobbs and Mahura vs. Seattle’s forechecking
The stock-in-trade for any Steve Konowalchuk-coached team is its commitment to the forecheck, hassling and harrying teams into giveaways and random dump-outs. Thanks to having seven 19-year-olds and overages up front, along with the ever-pesky rookie Sami Moilanen, they wore down Kelowna in the Western Conference final. To keep that in context, though, the Rockets had a depleted defence by the end of the series.
Regina, of course, made the deadline deal for Josh Mahura (ANA) with an eye toward assembling a contender for the 2018 Memorial Cup. In the short run, the trade brought in another offensively astute defenceman to go with Connor Hobbs (WSH), the runner-up nominee for the WHL’s top defenceman honour. Each will be integral to Regina’s chances of getting sufficient offensive zone time.
5) T-Birds power play vs. Pats penalty kill
Thanks in considerable part to Barzal, Bear and Donovan Neuls, Seattle has a 35.8 per cent power play in the postseason. (The typical WHL finalist has a conversion rate in the low to mid 20s.) The Pats have a 77.3 per cent penalty kill over the last two rounds.
The other side of the coin with Regina’s pedestrian penalty-killing rate is that points up how good coach John Paddock’s team has been at 5-on-5 play.
6) Seattle’s discipline vs. Regina’s skilled players
The Thunderbirds advanced in spite of playing short-handed 42 times across six games against Kelowna. With all of Regina’s abundant natural offence, Seattle will probably face more situations than usual where it has play aggressively but cleanly to avoid being whistled for stick infractions.
The Pats power play is cashing in 25.4 per cent of the time, which is fifth among the eight teams which played more than one playoff series. Seattle’s penalty kill (81.4 per cent) ranks third.
7) Stankowski vs. Brown
The barely 17-year-old Carl Stankowski pulled off the biggest goaltending heist of Round 3 with a 34-save effort during the Thunderbirds’ 2-1 win in Game 3 against Kelowna on April 25.
Saying that, though, undersells how stable Tyler Brown has been across two seasons as the Pats’ No. 1 goaltender. The Winnipegger has passed countless tests, including overtime in Game 2 when the Pats were in jeopardy of going down 0-2 against the Lethbridge Hurricanes. One can presume duelling against two accomplished WHL goalies — Swift Current’s Jordan Papirny and Lethbridge’s Stuart Skinner — over the past month has made Brown mentally tough.
Experience counts. Or at least everyone believes it does until the games begin. There is potential for a very good series to decide the WHL representative at the MasterCard Memorial Cup in Windsor in two weeks’ time.
[relatedlinks]
