It will be another Leafs-kings midget final
The St. John’s Maple Leafs will play for their third straight Newfoundland and Labrador Major Midget Hockey League championship.
The Maple Leafs downed the East Coast Blizzard 4-2 Friday night at the Glacier in Mount Pearl and followed up with a 2-0 win Saturday in the Goulds to take their best-of-seven semifinal in six games.
St. John’s will face the Western Kings in the best-of-seven final beginning next weekend in Corner Brook. The league-leading Kings swept past the Tri-pen Osprey in the other semifinal.
The Leafs knocked off the Kings in playoff series the last two years — prevailing in the 2016 final and a 2017 semifinal — but it will be Western that will be the definite favourite this time after losing just twice in 32 regular-season games, and winning seven of their eight meetings with the Leafs (219-2). However, of those eight contests, four were decided by a single goal, with another seeing the Kings scoring an empty-net tally late for a two-goal winning margin. ——
The Clarenville Caribous will get a chance to defend their Central West Senior Hockey League crown.
On Friday night at the Eastlink Events Centre in Clarenville, veteran Keith Delaney scored about three minutes into overtime to give the Caribous a 5-4 victory over the Grand Falls-windsor Cataracts and a 4-1 win in their best-of-seven semifinal.
It was the second overtime win for Clarenville in the series.
The Caribous will meet the Gander Flyers in the league final, with the first two games set for Gander next weekend. The Flyers earned a direct berth to the championship series by finishing first overall in the regular-season standings of the three-team league. Ryan Desrosiers, Kevin Reid, Brandon Roach and Chris Sparkes also scored for Clarenville. Kyle Mcguirk, Nick Lindstrom, Mike Hynes and Danny Wicks replied for the Cataracts. Mcguirk’s tally came in the final minute of regulation with Grand Falls goalie A.J. Whiffen on the bench for an extra attacker. Whiffen made 43 saves in the game. At the other end, his brother, Tyler, made 33 stops for Clarenville.
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The Southern Shore Breakers scored three unanswered goals in the second half of the game and came away with a 5-2 win over the CBR Renegades Saturday night in Conception Bay South in the opening game of their best-of-seven St. John’s Junior Hockey League semifinal.
For the Renegades, it was their second playoff game in as many nights as they had downed the Trinity-placentia Flyers 8-3 Friday at the C.B.S. Arena in the fifth and deciding game of their quarter-final series. The other semifinal, between the first-place Mount Pearl Blades and CBN Stars, got underway Sunday night at the Glacier in Mount Pearl.
The semifinal matchups all follow the form set in the regular-season standings, which saw the Blades finish in top spot, followed by CBR, Southern Shore and CBN to round out the top four.