Most teams in the Heritage Junior B Hockey League want nothing to do with playing the Blackfalds Wranglers.
The Red Deer Vipers are not most teams.
While they do not have a choice in the matter of their North Division semifinal opponent — they shut out the Three Hills Thrashers 4-0 in Game 3 on Saturday at the Red Deer Arena to win the quarter-final 2-1 — they are not intimidated by the defending provincial champions.
“We’re definitely the underdog, but we’re excited,” said Vipers head coach JD Morrical.
“We got what we wanted and it will be an exciting series for sure, I think it will go pretty well.
“It’s a big rivalry and our guys will pretty much do anything to beat them.”
The Wranglers rolled through the regular season as the top team in the league with a 34-2-2 record and an impressive plus-131 goals for/goals against differential.
But the Vipers are able to claim what most teams in the HJHL cannot, a regulation victory over the Wranglers, 5-1 on Dec. 20. In their other meetings, Blackfalds won 6-3 — though they were outshot 41-34 — on Feb. 3, 4-3 in overtime on Jan. 27 and 9-4 on Nov. 22.
The biggest issue standing in the Vipers way has been goaltending, but that has improved over the last month or two of the season as they have leaned heavily on veteran netminder Klay Munro.
In Saturday’s semifinal clinching shutout he was at his best, stopping all 42 shots he faced, including everything the Thrashers fired his way after pulling their goalie with 5:26 to go in the game.
If he can continue to play at this level, the Vipers will have a puncher’s chance.
“Klay played great, he didn’t really have to make a lot of amazing saves, but he made everything that he had to and didn’t give up any rebounds,” said Munro.
Regardless of how well Munro plays, the Vipers will have their work cutout for them. The Wranglers are one of the most complete junior B teams in the country and their first round playoff bye was well earned. Red Deer will have to hope their top three lines an find away to match with Blackfalds top lines.
“We have to shutdown their top line and we have to get scoring from our third and fourth lines,” said Morrical. “We don’t want to get into big high scoring games with them, we want to keep it low scoring and clog up the defensive zone as much as we can.”
A full repeat of their Game 3 win over Three Hills will be needed to have a real chance.
Cole deGraaf scored twice to lead Red Deer while Nick Glackin and Drew Joslin also tallied. The Vipers scored on both of their power play chances while they killed all four Thrasher man advantages.
“It was a the perfect game we were looking for,” said Morrical. “It was really a stress free game as a coach, we came out and played hard and didn’t give up many opportunities.”
Game 1 goes tonight at 7:30 p.m. in Blackfalds with Game 2 back in Red Deer on Saturday at 8 p.m. Game 3 is set for Sunday in Blackfalds at 3:30 p.m.
• The Stettler Lightning fell 2-1 to the Mountainview Colts in the other North quarter-final. Kevin Vandenhoven and Rick Gundlock scored for Mountainview and Thomas Della Siega made 29 saves for the win. Dylan Houston scored for Stettler while Simon Thieleman made 34 saves in the loss. The Colts now move on to play the Airdrie Thunder in the other North semifinal.