The U18 AA West Central Wheat Kings are coming off an exciting victory in their playoff opener, against the top team in the league in the Saskatoon Riverkings. A great angle of the overtime winner was provided on the Wheat Kings social media, and then was accompanied by a nice view of the teams first goal of the postseason as well:
We caught up with Wheat Kings coach Pat Sperle following the big win, and he said his players were more than excited to take a game off one of the leagues top teams so early. The Wheat Kings held a comfortable lead in Game 1 after coming out firing early, but the Riverkings did manage to complete their comeback with less than a minute left after being down 4-2 in the third. The team is no stranger to an adverse situation, and used their resiliency gained throughout the season to take the game 10 minutes into the overtime period with a powerplay marker.
"We were very excited to start with a game one win over the top team in the league. We have had a tough go with them all year, they are a very talented and very fast skating team. But we got some great goaltending, and we seemed to score on our chances so it's a pretty nice way to start the first game anyways."
Sperle also shared a bit about his teams journey into playoffs.
"Well we had some ups and downs as the year went on. We had a little dip here lately, and we ended up slipping in the standings from 5th down to 8th, but we were only really three points out of fifth," he explained, "Outside of the top two teams, everybody has pretty much exchanged wins and losses with everybody else, so it's a very nice tight competitive division we are in."
The first round of playoffs are alternating Best of 5's, as the U18's host their next game Saturday, and then return back to Saskatoon for Game 3 on Sunday.
"See how it goes. Got a long road ahead of us still. It was great to get game one of a five game series, but there is a long ways to go because they are a very good hockey team."
Anyone interested in attending the Wheat Kings home playoff game tomorrow, can view the information in the poster below:
Thu, Apr 25, 9:30 AM
