The Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League playoffs are here.
This is an exciting time for all junior A players whose seasons are still going, and that includes the hometown Humboldt Broncos.
The Broncos, who head into the playoffs as the league’s fifth seed have given fans plenty of reason to get excited over the final two and a half months.
Last three games aside, where the Broncos elected to rest most of their key guys, the final two and a half months of the season were the Broncos’s best this season.
In fact, with the exception of the Nipawin Hawks they were the best team in the SJHL in 2018.
The Broncos head into the playoffs with the league’s second leading scorer in captain Logan Schatz, and newly crowned co-Rookie of the Year in Jacob Wassermann.
Together that pair and the rest of the Broncos, which feature Wassermann and four other Humboldt natives, head into the playoffs where they will take on Melfort.
Sure Melfort finished with five more wins and 12 more points but this series will be a lot closer than the standings show.
The Mustangs made up a lot of their gap on the Broncos early in the season when the green and gold were still finding their way.
The Broncos actually had cut the deficit to six points with a couple of weeks left in the season, but Humboldt eventually ran out of games.
Knowing they could not move up or down the Broncos elected to rest some players, and the Mustangs stretched out the gap.
This is going to be a fun series, and if their final showdown was any indication they do not seem to like each other very much.
So if you are a fan of tough, physical, nasty hockey, this should be the series for you.
If you like skilled hockey, there should be some of that too.
Not only do the Broncos possess Schatz, who finished second in points scoring, but they have Nick Shumlanski and Conner Lukan, who each reached the 50-point plateau and Jaxon Joseph, a former Mustang, who scored 28 goals.
These two teams are even, having played six times with each team winning three times.
If you are looking for a distinction between the two teams there aren’t many, but the one thing the Broncos can hang their hat on is they are 2-0 against their highway 368 rivals since January.
This should be fun.
Between the opponent, the way the team have played since Christmas, and the players on the team there are plenty of reasons to be excited about this Broncos playoff run.
And they did their job on the ice this season, now it’s the fans’ job to be loud and proud.
Let’s make Humboldt a tough place to play this playoff year.
Let’s create the best seventh man in the league.
The players need it.
