The Ghostriders finished up the regular season with two wins against Golden and a 5-4 loss to Creston.
The Riders ended up in fourth place with 34 points. They will play Kimberley in the first round, they finished with a league leading 78 points. That means Kimberley will have home ice vs Fernie and every other team (if any) they play this season.
With a 44 point lead on the Riders it will be a tough series. The Riders lost all 8 games they played against Kimbo this year but most of them were one goal games. So it is more than possible to win this best of 7 series.
The Riders match up well on the gritty side of the puck but are behind on the scoring side, a couple of big losses put them at -17 in that department against the KD.
Not many people think the boys have a chance in this series so the Riders will have to use that as a motivational tool and try and channel the Vegas Golden Knights with their shockingly successful "Us Against the World" mantra. Anything can happen and you don’t win on paper.
I believe that systems help a bit but if a team plays a basic defensive game and each player “really want’s it more in every situation", they can win. That is what Mike Sullivan convinced the Penguins they needed to do two years ago when he was brought in to a failing team mid season, and they won everything, twice.
The Riders are in Kimberley Friday and Saturday then come here Sunday Feb 25th and Tuesday the 26th. Game 5 is in Kimberley Wednesday and Thursday March 1st game 6 is in Sparwood. Game 7 is Saturday in KD ville.
The games in Kimberley will be on the radio with 99.1 the Drive’s 99.1 Josh Hoffman at the mike
Rider Notebook
The Riders were down 5-1 in the second in the Creston game last Sunday then scored three to make it close. Owen Titus and Jordan Kromm each had a goal and 2 assists. If guys like that can score next week...
Sometimes the refs call fight’s that aren’t fights, we saw that a couple of weeks ago in the Kimberley game... but Brent Mack and Creston’s Liam Rycroft was a real fight...actually Sam Rousseau and Eric Welford each had one of those in the last couple of weeks as well... quiet everyone BC Hockey might be listening.
Mitch Titus finished with 64 points and finished number 7 in overall KIJHL scoring. A nice regular season ending for the “C”.
Keelan Saworski scored the most Rider goals with 26 and Kevin Pierce, Tristan Downe and Grayson Neufeld led the defence in scoring with 21-20 and 19 points.
Broc Merkl played 32 games with a .888 save % and Zak Larson played 15 with a .895 save %.
Ryan Partaker had the most PIM’s with127 followed by Brant Mack with 105.
Ethan Jang and Jace Woodley remain on the injury list and are questionable for the start of the PO's.
Mitch Titus’ second goal in OT in Golden was the game winner.
AP Geoff Drought had the win in net in Golden, he is a 17 year old from Cranbrook. Geoff played 4 games and had 3 wins against Golden.
Round the League
Kimberley finished 1st overall and ended on a 9 game win streak.
Creston’s Liam Plunkette won the KI scoring race with 94 points. He also had the most assists with 61.
Kelowna’s Brody Dale had the most points per game with 2.9, he had at least a point in 19 of the 20 games he played.
Creston’s Ron Wilkie had the most goals with 48, Rebel Ed Lindsey was the closest to him with 38.
The first place Nelson Leafs won a couple of awards, goalie Josh Williams had the best save % with .937 and Leaf assistant coach Sean Dooley had the best suspension % with 7 games per incident... he will miss the first round of the playoffs. Dooley in a brilliant come from behind effort late in the season has now ousted Kimberley’s Derek Stuart who was leading with 5. Both coaches were yelling etc at the officials. Cause they’re so easy to get ...
* There may be more that we don’t know about because the league tries to hide coaching suspensions. So just wondering, aren't playoff games worth more than regular season games? It musta bin bad.
The Revelstoke Grizzlies finished with the most PIM 1406, they win the coveted KIJHL colouring book. The Grizz finished with 73 points, second overall. Last season they had 41 points. Good recruiting job by Ryan Parent, is he that division’s Coach-GM of the Year.
Nelson’s Brent Headon had the most PIM’s with 195 we'll send him a copy of the colouring book as well.
Gone are the days of players with 400+ minutes and games where even the fans needed face-masks... Next year will be even worse thanks to Putyourfacemaskonachenko , Could there be more leagues going full cage next year... stay tuned
Osoyoos had the most power play goals with 78 and Beaver Valley was the most likely to score on the PP and did 27.62 % of the time.
Princeton scored the most shorthanded goals with 13, Kimberley was next with 12 but they only allowed 5 against vs Princeton’s 13. The Ghostriders were 4th with 9 scored and 5 shorthanded goals allowed.
Nelson had the best penalty kill and were successful 88.60% of the time. Kimberley was 4th at 87.75 Fernie last at 73.68. More things to watch out for this weekend.
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