The 100 Mile House Wranglers are advancing to the next round of the playoffs after defeating the Williams Lake Mustangs in back-to-back games over the weekend.
On Friday, March 7 the Wranglers beat the Mustangs 4-3 in what proved to be an exciting back-and-forth contest between the two Cariboo teams at the South Cariboo Rec Centre. They followed up this victory with a decisive 5-1 win in Williams Lake on Saturday, March 8 wrapping up the series with a 4-2 record.
"It was nice to win the series. It was a good game on Saturday in Williams Lake and nice to not have a one-goal game which we've had for the rest of them," Wranglers head coach Levi Stuart said. "Overall it's a great feeling for the group and we're very excited and looking forward to the next round here against Kamloops."
Before Saturday night's win, Stuart had said his team would need to tighten up aspects of their game following Friday night's close victory over the Mustangs.
“I wouldn’t consider it our best. Yeah, we outshot them by a lot for sure and their goalie played good again. We’ve got to find a way to shut some things down and close them out,” Stuart said. “We feel like we should have won by two or three goals but we had a couple of lapses there. We got to find a way to take care of the little details and not make these games so hard on ourselves.”
The South Cariboo Rec Centre was packed with fans of both teams Friday night with 829 listed as being in attendance. The game started with the Mustangs picking up an early powerplay goal thanks to the efforts of Branden Calahasen. However, the Wranglers soon responded with a power play goal of their own courtesy of Nash Hilworth and the duel was on.
Following another Wrangler penalty, the Mustang’s Declan Pocock was able to snipe a goal past Wrangler goalie Tyson Endall. However, the first period proved to be that of the powerplay, with the Wranglers’ Luke McFarlane taking advantage of another opportunity to tie the game up in the dying seconds of the first period.
During the second period, the difference in both team’s techniques became clear. The Wranglers relied on fancy puck work to try and set up goals, while the Mustangs favoured a more cautious and conservative defence during powerplays.
However, the Wranglers were able to claim the lead as defenceman Dawson Harden stole the puck from the Mustangs' goalie and slipped it into the net while he was out of it. The Wranglers followed up this good luck a few minutes later when Nelson Webster took control of the puck in the Wranglers’ territory and brought it all the way down to score the fourth goal of the night. Stuart remarked that was a highlight reel goal for Webster.
The Mustangs retaliated while the Wrangler Nation was still celebrating with Asher Lucas scoring on Endall, putting his team within a goal of tying the match. This would prove to be the last goal of the night.
During a tense third period, both the Mustangs and Wranglers had several chances to score with a mixture of good defence and luck preventing either team from scoring. As the minutes wound down excitement built in the crowd with the Mustangs pulling their goalie for the last minute and a half to try and tie the game. This gamble proved fruitless as the Wranglers shot several times at the empty net and the home crowd gave them a standing ovation when the buzzer sounded.
“Everybody contributed and whether guys had their best game or not, we had good shifts from every line and every one of our D played fairly solid, for the most part,” Stuart remarked. “We let the one goal in and we just got to do better with cleaning that stuff up.”
On Saturday, Stuart said his team put in one of their better games this year, noting it was a full 60 minutes of effort from all his players. He noted it was especially nice to get so many goals past the Mustangs' goalie Alex Jessey. Stuart said that Jessey was the best player in the series and stood on his head more than once to prevent the Wranglers from scoring.
"He made it extremely difficult for us to get pucks by him, so I can only imagine he was pretty tired on Saturday after facing 50, 60 shots every single game," Stuart said.
Stuart noted that the first goal of the game from Harden in the second period which he described as a beautiful goal, noting Harden took advantage of a pass from Kayden Stark to toe drag around the goalie into the open net. Following this, Ethan Davey capitalized to score twice while Riley Langille scored their fourth goal of the night.
"It was nice to score a few goals in consecutive order with a few minutes left in the second period there, we scored three quick ones," Stuart remarked.
During the third period, Matthew Balderson scored the fifth and final goal for the Wranglers, sealing the deal. Williams Lake's sole goal came from Matthew Keylor in the second period, following Harden's first goal. Stuart credits this lack of scoring to his team's technique.
"The rest of the defence shut it down well. We kept their top guys to the outside and made it hard on them every ship. It was an all-around good game," Stuart remarked.
The Wranglers will now face the Kamloops Storm on Friday, March 14 and Saturday, March 15 at the South Cariboo Rec Centre. The Storm swept the Quesnel River Rush 4-0 in their opening playoff round.
"It will be a good week of practice to get ourselves ready and dialled in. It will be a different look against Kamloops, it's not quite the exact same team we've seen in the regular season," Stuart remarked. "There will be some challenges to face I'm sure but we're looking to play them just as hard as we have all year."
