This is what underdogs do.
Barely making it into the playoffs with a win on the final weekend of the regular season, the Vancouver Northeast Chiefs knew what everyone else expected to happen in the B.C. Major Midget Hockey League’s first round of the playoffs.
The regular season champion Valley West Hawks may have thought it, too. But what mattered most was what the Burnaby-based Chiefs did to complete the David-versus-Goliath storyline.
On Sunday, the Northeast Chiefs ended the Hawks’ season in a 3-2 win, capping a dramatic 2-1 series triumph for the eighth-place squad.
Forward Jack Steffens scored with four minutes left in the third period, breaking a 2-2 stalemate and putting the underdogs in the driver’s seat. And while Valley West unleashed the league’s best offence in hopes of netting the equalizer, they couldn’t put one by the defence, led by Burnaby netminder Michael Harroch.
“(Harroch) made a couple of huge stops in the third period, one right after we scored the go-ahead goal, with a big kick save,” remarked Jacob Lazare, the Chiefs’ director of media relations. Harroch started all three games after posting a 7-9-2 record with a 3.51 goals-against average during the regular season.
“It was a combination of goaltending and defence. It was everybody buying in defensively, because the Hawks pushed hard. They were all over us and it looked like they had a powerplay for four minutes at the end.”
The Northeast Chiefs, who draw talent from east Burnaby, New Westminster, the Tri-Cities and Ridge Meadows communities, posted a sluggish, 14-20-3-3 record in the regular season, far back of the Hawks’ 31-6-2-1 mark. But one of those six Valley losses did come at the hands of the Chiefs, just three weeks earlier.
That win gave the underdogs, who are coached by Jamie Jackson, the confidence needed to take the best-of-three series.
Steffens’ marker capped a rally that began from a 2-0 deficit, as the Hawks blitzed ahead with two goals 1:19 apart early in the second period. While Aleks Bujak made it a one-goal game late in the frame, it wasn’t until defenceman Cody Hough tied it on a fantastic individual effort just 43 seconds into the third, that a possible comeback was in play.
“Hough’s goal was a beautiful goal. He went around about three different Hawks and put in a perfect shot. It was one of our goals of the year. The stage and the timing of it just added to the brilliance,” said Lazare.
It came on the heels of Game 2, where the Hawks demonstrated why they led the league in offence and defence with a solid 4-2 win to tie the series. Although the Chiefs struck first on Burnaby Winter Club product Kyler Kovich’s goal, Valley West counted three goals in the second period, where the underdogs managed just two shots and had their backs to the boards much of the time.
In Game 1, Burnaby’s Jackson Murphy-Johnson notched his second goal of the season, a wrist shot from inside the point with seven minutes left. The 16-year-old, listed by the Western Hockey League’s Spokane Chiefs earlier in the year, wired a low shot to break a 3-3 draw and serve the first shock of the weekend.
“(Murphy-Johnson) hasn’t been much of an offensive guy but he’s one of our most improved players this year, he’s come a long way. He’s morphed into one of our top defencemen,” said Lazare.
Also scoring in the win were Hough, Quinton Hill and Ryan Suzukovich.
The Chiefs’ roster includes New Westminster native Dante Ballarin, a forward who has tallied four goals and 10 assists over 24 games this season, Burnaby blueliner Zach Abenante, another major midget rookie with a goal and two assists during the season, and netminder Logan Terness, who posted a goals-against average of 4.00 over 23 games, with seven wins.
Now, the Chiefs take on another favourite, this time the Cariboo Cougars in the semifinals this weekend in Prince George.
The other semifinal features the Vancouver Northwest Giants, who draw players from Burnaby, North and West Vancouver, against the Fraser Valley Thunderbirds. That series begins Friday, with all games at the George Preston Rec Centre in Langley.
The Giants are led by Burnaby’s Christian Buono, a centre who finished with 16 goals and 28 assists over 35 games, and a pair of local defencemen, Jason Chu and Alek Sukunda.
Buono tallied three goals – including Game 1’s overtime winner -- and three assists in the team’s two-game sweep of the Okanagan Rockets. Chu tallied once, while Sekunda counted a pair of assists in the series-ending 4-3 win, setting up the game winner.
