Knights advance to Memorial Cup Friday semifinal
6-1 victory sends London team to semifinal against Portland
SASKATOON — The season was on the line for the Saskatoon Blades and London Knights.
One team played like that was the case, while the other looked like it had already made its summer plans.
The Knights crushed the Blades 6-1 in the MasterCard Memorial Cup tiebreaker game in front of 7,895 spectators at Credit Union Centre.
London moves to Friday’s semifinal against the Portland Winterhawks.
The tournament hosts are the first team eliminated.
The Blades were missing veteran Dalton Thrower, who was suspended Thursday for the remainder of the Memorial Cup as a result of a check to the head on Winterhawks winger Taylor Leier the previous night. Winterhawks acting head coach and general manager Travis Green said Leier is suffering from concussion symptoms and is unlikely to play the rest of the tournament.
With Thrower out of the lineup, seldom-used blueliner Kyle Schmidt took his place. The rest of the defencemen, notably Duncan Siemens, Darren Dietz and rookie Nelson Nogier, were forced to play larger roles.
But Thrower’s absence was only a tiny problem for the Blades on Thursday.
Their offence — in particular their power play – was nowhere to be found, which led to the deterioration of their entire game.
With the Blades on the man advantage early in the first, Knights centre Bo Horvat’s penalty shot narrowly beat Blades goalie Andrey Makarov to the stick side 3:24 into the game.
Seth Griffith scored on a beautiful individual effort on the power play, Chris Tierney netted another goal 49 seconds later and the rout was on.
Rupert, Kyle Platzer and Nikita Zadorov scored before the third period was four minutes old. Nathan Burns scored the lone Blades’ goal, beating Knights starter Jake Patterson off the rush at 11:40 of the third.