Rebels show confidence heading into East final
There’s nothing like a Game 7 win to galvanize a team.
The Red Deer Rebels were feeling — deservedly so — pretty darn good about themselves when they arrived in Brandon this week following a thrilling 2-1 series-deciding victory over the Regina Pats Tuesday.
There wasn’t much time to sit back and enjoy the accomplishment, though. Not with the red-hot Wheat Kings eager to kick off the Eastern Conference final Friday night (6:30 p.m., 106.7 FM The Drive).
But Rebels defenceman Haydn Fleury said his club will be better off for the marathon win over the Pats.
“It brings the team that much closer together,” Fleury said after practice in Brandon Thursday afternoon. “It gives you that extra experience. We only had one player who had played in a Game 7.
“When you can get those kinds of games under your belt, it only makes you stronger.”
The Rebels, for the first time this spring, will not have home-ice advantage.
The Wheaties, who finished nine points ahead of the Rebels, won the Eastern Conference crown and have home-ice advantage the rest of the way.
“Brandon is a really good team,” Fleury said. “We’re one of the final four teams left, but our goal is to win the Dub. We have a couple more mountains to climb, but we’re on the right track.”
The defending champion Kelowna Rockets and Seattle Thunderbirds kick off the Western Conference final Friday as well.
The regular-season series between the two clubs was split evenly down the middle. But despite each team winning a pair of tilts, the scores were wildly inconsistent.
Rebels goaltender Rylan Toth posted shutouts in the first two clashes, backstopping his squad to a 4-0 win in Brandon before watching his teammates stampede their way to a 10-0 laugher on home ice.
Wheat Kings goalie Jordan Papirny responded with his own 4-0 goose egg in Brandon, then stood tall during a 2-1 win at the Centrium.
Fleury doesn’t expect to see many blowouts in this series.
“We’re not really looking towards that,” he said of the 10-0 rout. “They were missing a lot of key players at world junior when that game happened. “We’re expecting their best.” The Rebels learned a valuable lesson in their second-round win against the Pats — you can’t spend the entire night in the penalty box.
“I think that will still be the key,” said Fleury, a Carolina Hurricanes first-rounder. “We want to play heavy, but play with discipline.
“We don’t need to be killing off seven, eight, nine penalties a game. We want to keep that to as little as possible. “We want to take the good penalties, the kind you can kill off, not the offensive-zone ones. Those become hard to kill off through the series.”