In round three of the KIJHL Playoffs the Ghostriders play the Nelson Leafs.. The winner of this seven game series will play the winner of the Okanagan/Shuswap Conference for the KIJHL Championship either Princeton or Revelstoke.
Nelson: The Leafs have played and won two seven game series’ to get this far. Their first series was against their main rivals in
Beaver
Valley and in round two they played
Spokane. The Leafs finished the
Spokane series last Tuesday in Nelson with a 7-1 win. The home team won every game. The Leafs top scorers in the playoffs so far are Brett McKinnion 12pts., 16 yr. old Braydon Sherbinin 11 pts. Gavin Currie 10 pts. 16 yr. old Gus Correale 10 pts. Scott Jago 10 pts. and Mike Spring 10 pts. Nelson’s Billy Faust is their # 1 goalie with a 6-6 record.
Nelson finished second overall in the KIJHL with 76 points, Fernie ended up with 84. The two teams split their regular season’s games. Nelson won at home 5-1 in December and Fernie won at home 6-5 in overtime.
Your Ghostriders : The Riders won their first two series’ in eight games straight. The first series was against Golden and series two was against Creston. Rider Coach Will Verner picked Mark Strachan, Jason Greenwell and Bond Hawryluk as the “Three Stars “ of the Creston series.
Here’s Will Verner on his Three Star Picks.
We were able to get good efforts from all of our players throughout the series. Greenwell was solid in net and has to be one of the stars of the series. His stats are excellent and show how difficult it is for teams to score against our club (goals against average of 2.0 for the series and a save percentage of 92.6% and his overall record this playoff season is 8-0 with a 1.23 GAA and 95.24SV%). Scott Anderson and Cody Boekestyn were excellent during the 2nd round. The star of the series on the back will go to Mark Strachan. Mark is so smart with the puck and competes so hard below the dots Creston found it very difficult to get any offensive zone pressure when Strachs was on the ice. Upfront the usual crew of 10,28,2 were threats. The pp was 4-4 at one point and the re-emergence of Matt MacDonald and the continued top play of Brendon Mangone was a big factor in the 4 game series. The star up front for the 2nd round was Bond Hawryluk.
