At the end of November Jeff Odgers and the Yorkton Harvest had two wins after the SMAAAHL's second month and were battling just to stay out of last place in what many were thinking was going to be a write off year despite slight flashes of talent here and there from a young and inexperienced team. Fast forward to the end of the SMAAAHL's regular season in the last week of February and the Harvest have a sparking 22-14-5-3 record good for fifth place going into the playoffs.
With fifth place locked up the Harvest came into Swift Current this weekend looking to spoil the Legionnaires home finale with their season ending automatically in second last place after a disappointing second half of the season. Coach Odgers and the Harvest were looking to go into the playoffs with momentum and a winning streak and gave Spencer Bomboir the start in goal Saturday night as he looked for his seventh win of the season.
A wild affair saw fourteen goals on Saturday with the Harvest hopping out to a three goal lead early in the third period and riding out four powerplay goals to hold onto a wild 8-6 win in a wide open affair. Logan Herchak led the Harvest with two goals as seven Yorkton players got on the scoring board in the win and Bomboir made 28 saves and grabbed a win to end his regular season on a positive note with Carson Bogdan resuming his starting duties on Sunday to close out the season.
On Sunday the Harvest continued to punish Swift Current on the powerplay with three more goals, riding Dakota Odgers four assists in the hometown of his WHL club Broncos to a 7-3 win. Donavon Lumb added two goals and Bogdan made 31 saves to finish the regular season 15-8-4. Lynnden Pastachak also got his 29th goal and assist on Sunday to finish as the Harvest's leading point getter with fifty eight.
Now the Harvest look forward to a best of five match up with the Regina Pat Canadians to open their championship hopes in round one. Despite having never beat the Canadians this season the Harvest took the Pats to overtime in every game this year and often led late in the third period before suffering a late goal, making this series an extremely intriguing clash of two very even teams.
The Canadians will be led on the blueline by the solid defensive core of Troy Murray and Sam Ruopp and the goaltending tandem of Logan Flodell and Cameron Pateman. Pateman had a 2.58 GAA this while posting 13 wins and Flodell has been stellar with a 1.58 GAA and an insane 12-3 record to back it up. Flodell grabbed the last two starts of the season so one will assume he will start the series for the Canadians and gives the Canadians a distinct advantage in goal for this series. Carson Bogdan will have to come up with at least three stellar games in net if the Harvest are going to pull out this series against a team that has had their number all year albeit all in overtime.
At forward the Canadians will counter the Harvest's dynamic duo of Odgers and Pastachak with two accomplished scorers of their own. Zachary Zaborosky and Mitch Lipon both cracked the fifty point plateau for the Canadians this season and will be joined along side twenty goal scorer and 45 point man Tristan Frei as the players the Harvest will need to key on in their defensive systems. Finally Jayden Halbgewachs will be an X factor in this series as the rookie forward had 36 points this season and can get hot at any time and has the potential to be a future top line forward in the WHL.
On the Harvest's end a hard working team that has been one of the league's best since December simply just needs to claw out wins they so closely came to accomplishing in the regular season against the Pats if they want to take this series. It might come down to getting the lucky bounces they didn't get in the regular season at the end of the day, but a team that is extremely balanced will be looking to find a spark from anywhere to provide a difference maker. A candidate for that player just might be Chase McKersie, a player with a knack for scoring big goals since the Christmas break, his play can always come alive and could come up with one of those timely playoff goals both teams will need in what is going to be a tightly contested series.
Playoff hockey is coming to the FAA this March and with the way these two teams went at each other in the regular season one thing is a guarantee, you won't want to miss a single second of this series.
