After three wins at weekend, Huskies on verge of league championship

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — Three wins over the weekend have the Fort St. John Huskies on the verge of championship glory, in an entire reversal of what seemed impossible just one week ago.

In holding their home-ice advantage in the Strike Group’s North West Junior Hockey League (NWJHL) finals, the Pups now lead the best-of-seven series three games to two over the La Crete Lumber Barons with a chance to win their fifth championship in six years.

While head coach Todd Alexander says the crowds at North Peace Arena were loud enough to make him and his staff “scream instructions on the bench,” he attributes momentum swing from two games down to one game up to simply “playing the right way.”

“[Games one and two] we weren’t playing our style of game [or] our structure,” said Alexander. “We were trying to play their game, and it wasn’t working out for us.

“The first night here [Friday’s 3-2 win], we didn’t play up to our style. I thought our goaltending bought us 20 minutes to get our act in gear.  The next 40 minutes, we started to play our game.”

While the Pups won game three by a score of 3-2 on a late goal by Connor Cozens, the next two games were the style “we’re supposed to play,” according to Alexander. 

Fort St. John won games four and five by scores of 8-4 and 5-1, respectively. 

MacCoy Willms had three goals and an assist for four points and Ashton Underhill had a goal and four assists during the weekend.

“[The veterans] have learned their lessons,” said Alexander. “They had a little bit of the taste of disappointment [from last season’s championship loss] in their mouth.

“We came back and set our goal: get back to La Crete. We got that goal down now.”

However, the head coach knows, going into game six back in Alberta, that the defending champion Lumber Barons won’t go down without a fight.

“We’ve set ourselves up with an opportunity to go and take care of business,” said Alexander. “They have great depth and great players. There’s a lot of respect on that side of things.

“They’re too good of a hockey club, and we aren’t built the way they are built. So we [have] got to stick to what we know and how we play best.”

Game six of the NWJHL finals will be on Saturday, March 29th at the Raymond Knelsen Arena.  The game will begin at 6:00 p.m. Fort St. John time, 7:00 p.m. Mountain time.

More information about the NWJHL finals is available on the league’s website.