After pulling off a reverse sweep in round two against Fernie, battling back from a three-goal deficit to win the series in game seven, the Kimberley Dynamiters remain hot in round three, kicking things off with two wins against Beaver Valley. They’ve now won six straight post-season games.
Kimberley only saw the Nitehawks for two games during the regular season, winning one and losing the other.
“We knew they were physical, they’re a younger team but they have some real good players and they’re very, very well coached and they stick to their systems well,” Nitros head coach Derek Stuart said.
READ MORE: Dynamiters pull off reverse sweep
“We saw that in the first two games and we were just able to get some goals when we needed them and I thought Saturday, they did much better than they did on Friday and I’m assuming tomorrow will be their best game of the series so far.”
Game one was less physical than game two, Stuart said, owing that to both teams feeling tired from game sevens the previous Monday.
In general, the change of format to playoffs the KIJHL implemented this year to make them less rigorous has made a big difference in terms of his team being far less plagued by injuries this year compared to last.
However, the Nitros were unfortunately hit with a bug, resulting in four players unable to play at all, and half the team was quite sick for both games, with numerous players coughing uncontrollably throughout the intermissions.
“It was a great effort by the team to battle through not feeling their best and not playing their best, so we’re looking to get back to being healthy and playing better tomorrow,” Stuart said.
He attributed their success to the team defence, with everyone buying into playing defence first, a cornerstone of Dynamiters strategy.
“Any time you give up two goals or one goal our team has a great chance to win and I think that’s been the strength again,” Stuart said. “We weren’t at our best in either game but we got some timely goals and limited their scoring chances.”
Despite not feeling their best, the Nitros came out of the weekend’s at-home games with a 4-2 win on Friday and a 5-1 on Saturday.
Kade Leskosky continues to be a strong presence in the post season. He opened the scoring in both weekend games, his sixth and seventh goals of the playoffs.
Carson Cleland had two assists on Friday, with Campbell McLean, Tristan Weil and Justin Sommer scoring the balance of the goals.
Trystan self also continues his own great play, saving 28 shots on Friday and 31 on Saturday.
After Leskosky’s goal got things going in the first period on Saturday, team captain Jayden Kostiuk got his fifth and Christian Mealey his sixth playoff goal making it 3-0 heading into the second. Beaver Valley’s Spencer Dixon-Reusz scored the only goal of the second period and it would end up being his team’s only goal of the night.
Ethan Bloomquist nabbed his first of the post season and Tyler Lindal his second, and it was a 5-1 win.
The key now is to not let up and continue to keep the pressure on as the Nitros head to Beaver Valley for games three and four. Stuart said they’ve been taking it one game at a time since game three in the Fernie series and they’ll look to just give it a solid effort and see what happens.
“I think we learned a valuable lesson through round two and hopefully the guys from last year’s team learned a lesson, because we were in this exact same spot last year in the conference final, up two nothing heading to Nelson,” Stuart said. “It’s definitely no time to take our foot off the gas.”
paul.rodgers@kimberleybulletin
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