Blades Survive Round One - Barely -- Great White Rumour Mill

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Subject: Blades Survive Round One - Barely

Author:
Lien Seyah

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Date Posted: 17:46:58 12/23/04 Thu

After a much publicized end of season winning streak, the Yellowknife Blades came into the playoffs with a huge amount of confidence. Maybe too much.

After trading wins with Calgary in round one to see the series tied 2-2, the Blades lost the all pivotal game 5, at home no less, resulting in a 3-2 series lead for Calgary. This situation forced the Blades to win 2 straight games which would be no easy task against such a great team like Calgary.

The Blades have actually been a much better team on the road this season, so winning game 6 on the road was not a huge surprise. The real challenge was going to be winning game 7 at home against a determined Calgary team.

What a seventh game it turned out to be. No fan can deny the excitement a game 7 overtime brings, and that is exactly where this game took them. And into overtime, Yellowknife's season MVP, perhaps the GWHL's MVP, Vincent Lecavalier proved his worth, scoring the series winner. And he scored it in style.

Lecavalier got a pass from Kenny Jonsson at the blueline and had a determined look on his face. Making three beautiful stickhaandling moves to get past Joe Sakic and Miroslav Satan, with a sudden burst of speed he also split the defence pairing of Zdeno Chara and Craig Rivet to get a partial breakaway, and made a gorgeous deking move that left Calgary goalie Tommy Salo with his jockstrap wrapped around his earlobe.

And the Yellowknife bench went beserk. The team flooded onto the ice to celebrate.

"Vinny has been our best player all season" commented defenseman Scott Stevens. "It was really fitting for him to score such a big goal and the guys are all happy it was him. He deserved it."

Next up for the Blades is a matchup against the Totems from Victoria. The Totems are an extremely tough team with spectacular goaltending. If the Blades are going to pull through in this series, they will need a better effort from goalie Jose Theodore, who almost lost his starting job to Milan Hnilicka against Calgary if it hadn't been for Hnilicka's and Kevin Weekes' equally poor performances.

"Goaltending will be key this series and we need Jose to be better" said Blades GM Neil Hayes. "Jose knows he can be better and we fully expect him to have a dynamite series against the Totems.

Action gets underway tonight in Yellowknife. Stay tuned for more.

-Lien Seyah, Yellowknife Sun

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