Surprises continue in CIHL Divisional finals as home teams, Hazelton and Williams Lake, both win openers

The home teams held the edge as the CIHL East and West Division finals got underway in Hazelton and Williams Lake, each winning close games by a one goal margin. The dream first playoff round in the West Division continued for the Hazelton Wolverines, as they outscored the defending champion Kitimat Ice Demons 3-1 in a hard fought first period and held on for a 4-3 final win to take the lead in the best of three playoffs. In Williams Lake the Stampeders bolstered by the return of a couple of their sterling core players, edged the Division-winning Smithers Steelheads, 6-5, in the kind of end-to-end game everybody expected. In Hazelton, the Ice Demons recognized that going into Wolverines' territory short their top three scoring centers, could be costly. But the banged-up Demons did not play well in the opening period and the fired-up Wolverines made them pay. With hard fore-checking, the Wolverines came back after the Demons took the lead on a goal by Derek Wakita, and scored on two of their first four shots. One of them was a short-handed blast by Stu Barnes, that goaltender Brett Vilness got most of, but trickled through to roll over the line and tie the game at 1-1. The Wolverines used a strong fore-check and twice wrestled the puck from the Ice Demons to score hard-working goals by Matt Wolfenden and Landon Vipond, to lead 3-1, at the first intermission. Demons scored as easy goal as Greg Sabey passed to an unmarked Andre Baldo early in the second and the Wolverines defense backed in while goaltender Cody Smith did some sterling work to allow the Wolverines to take a 3-2 lead into the third. Another forced turnover allowed Mitch Marshall to score on the second of only three Wolverines shots in the third period, but it was enough as the Demons could only manage one late goal by Blaine Markwart, with 48 seconds left in the game and the goaltender off for an extra forward. But they couldn't get the tying goal and Hazelton celebrated its first-ever victory over the Demons. In Williams Lake the goaltenders both saw a lot of rubber. The Stamps got two goals from Brent McIsaac and singles fro Francis Johnson, Wilfred Robbins, Jason Wright and Robin Gilbert, while the Division winning Steelheads had a hat trick from Tyler Koldic and goals from Matt Arnold and Darnell Calfa, in the losing effort. The second and third games, if necessary, will be held in Kitimat and Smithers respectively this coming weekend, Feb. 14 and 15 and the winners will advance to a best-of-three final for the Rio Tinto Alcan CIHL championship cup.