Pride hosts Wild in final regular-season meeting between P.E.I. teams
Playoff preview takes place Thursday
Prince Edward Island’s two entries in the New Brunswick/ P.E.I. Major Midget Hockey League will meet for the final time in the 2017-18 regular season on Thursday.
The Kensington Monaghan Farms Wild will visit the Charlottetown Bulk Carriers Pride at MacLauchlan Arena on the UPEI campus. The opening faceoff is set for 7 p.m.
It will be playoff preview as the Wild and Pride will clash in a best-of-seven series to determine the provincial major midget champion at the end of the regular season. That series will start in early March. The Wild is in second place in the six-team league at 226-1 (won-lost-overtime losses). Kensington, which has won four games in a row and 13 of their last 14 league contests, is very much alive in the race for first place in the regular season. Kensington is five points back of the first-place Moncton Flyers (24-6-2), but the Wild also has three games in hand. The Pride, who is fourth at 12-13-5, is in a stretch of playing five of their last six regularseason games at home, which will include an Islander Day make-up match against the third-place Saint John Vitos (19-11-0) at MacLauchlan Arena on Monday, Feb. 19, at 4 p.m.
Both teams enter the all-P.E.I. clash coming off wins on Sunday. The Wild recorded a 6-1 road win over the Fredericton Caps (7-22-2) while the Pride topped Northern 4-1 in Charlottetown.
It’s the start of a busy week for the Wild, who will travel to Bathurst, N.B., to take on the Northern Moose (7-19-4) on Friday night, before closing out a stretch of three games in three days on home ice at Community Gardens against the Vitos on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.