After dropping game one in its second round Alberta Major Bantam Hockey League (AMBHL) playoff series, the Xtreme faced back-to-back elimination games against Medicine Hat last weekend.
Airdrie won them both, 6-3 at the Ron Ebbesen Arena on Feb. 25, and 3-1 in the ‘Hat a day later, to clinch the best-of-three series. Airdrie moved on to face the Calgary Bisons in the best-of-five regional finals – which began Feb. 29 after the City View went to press.
The Xtreme will host game two at 7:15 p.m. on March 3; game three is set for March 5 and games four and five, if needed, will take place March 8 in Airdrie and March 11 in Calgary.
Airdrie and the Bisons met three times during the regular season, the most recent encounter being on Feb. 5 where the teams tied 5-5. The Xtreme won 4-3 on Oct. 30 and the Bisons won 5-4 on Sept. 24.
“They’re a good club and have some scoring punch up front,” said Xtreme head coach Terry Keogh. “We played them fairly evenly all season, although in the recent tie, we had a very poor first period and were down 4-1. But we showed we could battle back.”
I look for this to be a pretty good series. They are great competitors and we need to be at our best. Any coach would like to see three wins right off the bat, but I anticipate that it’s going to go at least four and probably to the fifth game.”
Chad Harrison had two goals for Airdrie in the game-one 6-5 loss, played Feb. 24 in Medicine Hat, with Kyle Antochow, Kris LeClair and Andrew Fyten contributing singles. Goaltender Ryan Ternes made 36 saves in net.
“We didn’t play all that bad, but we had some huge faux pas in our defensive end, which hung Ryan Ternes out to dry,” Keogh said. “But we used that as a learning tool and were able to correct that for Saturday and Sunday.”
The Hockey Hounds, which had a large boisterous fan base for the road game, opened the scoring in game two when Kas Stolz tapped a loose puck past Ternes, 7:52 into the game. But Dillon Dube answered for the Xtreme, as he scored two consecutive goals with similar top-shelf wrist shots.
Airdrie extended its lead to 5-1 by the end of the second period, as Troy Van Tetering, Ryan Barrow and Zach Giroux all put pucks past Medicine Hat netminder Xavier Burghardt.
The Hounds’ Cody Verge put a well-placed slap shot past Ternes two minutes into the third period to cut the lead to 5-2. The teams would then exchange late goals.
“I was very pleased with the response in game two,” Keogh said. “We dominated most of the game, but had somewhat of a concern with a couple of the late goals that kind of gave them some life for Sunday.”
Tristan Thompson, Jordan McConnell and Giroux had the goals in the clinching game-three win, while Ternes made 41 saves in net.
“Ternes was the big story on Sunday,” Keogh said. “We didn’t play as well as we could have, but he played huge. In the playoffs, you’ve got to find a way to win games and goalies have to steal the odd game for you. The guys were pretty happy, on the ice and it carried over to the dressing room; they were a pretty happy group.”
