Vikings sail to three-peat in WHSHL

Some teams crumble under the pressure and some thrive on it.

The Vincent Massey Vikings are certainly the latter.

The Vikings shipped themselves into the dynasty category after capturing the Westman High School Hockey League championship with a 3-2 victory over the Dauphin Clippers in Game 3 of their best-of-three final at the Sportsplex on Monday night to complete their long-awaited three-peat.

“We’ve put lots of effort in, had lots of injuries that guys have battled through, came out and had a couple losses, but we still battled through all the practices and everything, and we made it happen,” said Massey co-captain Addax Egan. “It’s by far the best feeling you can have as a player to be able to come out and know all the effort you put in and time that you worked to be able to be the champion paid off.

“I knew we’d have pressure and I knew it’d be harder, but I knew that roster was going to be able to do it and we did it.”

Egan, a third-year forward who led the playoffs in scoring with six goals and 17 points, co-captained his Vikings squad along with fellow senior Daylan Duncalfe in a year that featured plenty of turnover with 13 new faces replacing last season’s graduating players who helped the club to a flawless 32-0 record in the regular season before breezing their way to a second straight WHSHL title.

Talk about some big shoes to fill.

Nonetheless, the young and the experienced embraced the pressure together to power Massey to a second-place finish thanks to a 24-3-1 record this season, before putting their heads down and collecting six of seven in the playoffs to keep the hardware for themselves another year.

Head coach Brent Blaine admitted expectations were high heading into the year, but were managed well due to his team’s one game at a time mentality.

“Our guys handled it great,” he said. “When you win for two years previous to this year, there is that pressure to contribute and to continue where we’ve been, especially the year before when you go 40-0 throughout the regular season and playoffs.

“We kind of just spoke about the end goal and we set some goals in the beginning of the year, one being we wanted to have a winning record and give ourselves a good chance and I think our goal was to go 22-6 in the regular season, and we exceeded that by going 24-4. We just kept trying to break it down for the guys and we didn’t get too far ahead of ourselves. We just kind of stayed in the moment and when it came to the playoffs, the series is so short in a three-game series that you’ve got to be ready to go from puck drop.”

And that they were.

The Vikings put their goal-scoring ability and shrewd defensive zone play on full display from the very-get go, as they swept the Hamiota/Rivers/Elton/Strathclair Huskies with 2-0 and 7-1 victories and then did the same to a talented Neepawa Tigers team with 6-1 and 7-2 decisions.

That set the stage for a final clash with a familiar foe.

Dauphin once again worked its way to the championship after taking care of business against the Glenboro/Carberry/Baldur Wildcats and the No. 1 seed Swan Valley Tigers to try and get revenge on Massey, who swept the series with ease last year.

But, this time around was a nail biter.

The Vikings may have scorched the Clippers 5-0 in Game 1 at home last Wednesday, but in Game 2 they were in for their biggest test yet.

“We had a really good first game at home, we go up to a tough building to play in Dauphin, and they really played well the second game. They were all over us and pressured us hard,” said Blaine. “They ran all four lines, they came at us, they pressured us hard right and they changed their game plan a little bit. They took away the neutral zone on us and we couldn’t really get out of our zone as well as we wanted to, and that kind of hemmed us in our own end.”

Dauphin’s adjustments to play as the aggressor clearly paid off as it bounced back with a 3-1 win to push the series to a do-or-die contest back at the Sportsplex on Monday.

With the Vikings headed back home to play in front of their fans along with the favourite tag hovering over their heads due to the success they’ve had over the last few years, it would have been easy to let the pressure get to them, but like they’d done all year, they just embraced it, along with some changes to their game plan.

Blaine implemented a small adjustment in his team’s defensive zone in hopes of having more support exiting their own end and an easier time transitioning the puck north. Its opponents made changes in Game 2, so now it was Massey’s chance to throw Dauphin for a loop.

Egan opened the scoring with 12 minutes 18 seconds remaining in the first frame and then Vaughn McLeod doubled the margin less than three minutes later to give the Vikings a 2-0 lead after 20.

In the middle frame, Will Busby got the Clippers on the board less than six minutes in, before Julien Lopez then lit the lamp on the man advantage a few minutes later to even the game at twos. But Massey pushed back.

With just over seven minutes left before the second intermission forward Cole Adams hit the back of the net off assists from none other than captains Egan and Duncalfe.

All that was left to do in the third was hold down the fort and that’s exactly what they did thanks to some stellar work between the pipes from senior Hunter Gregory.

“It was very relieving after that final buzzer went,” said Gregory, who was named the MVP of the playoffs after racking up five wins along with a 1.34 goals against average and .950 save percentage. “Having all this pressure, and then last year we played Dauphin in the finals and beat them there, so a little bit of a rivalry there too, so that made it feel a little bit better and obviously when you’re on home ice too in front of everyone, that was great.”

Never mind the bleachers — not even a spot up by the glass was available that night as the arena was completely packed with friends, family and fans.

Gregory said he expected it to be busy, but even he was surprised by the turnout.

“As soon as I walked out of that room for the first time and saw how many people there were it felt great knowing how many people are supporting us there, and it was probably the most packed I’ve ever seen it. It was loud too, so just being able to win in front of everyone was great.”

Gregory’s biggest stop of the game, and arguably of his high school career, came with four minutes left in the third when he shut the door on a breakaway to defend his team’s 3-2 cushion.

Egan believes his goaltender’s performance was no different than what he’s seen from him every game.

“That guy was unreal for us all year,” Egan said. “He was the backbone to our team, I would say. He was unreal. The number of big saves he’s made and in the third he came up bigger than we ever needed him. He played his heart out all year and there’s nothing more the team could have asked from him.”

Gregory credited his defence for the way they played in front of him, and the forwards as well, some of which were so dialled in to defend the lead, they didn’t even know the game was over.

“I was out on the ice and I didn’t even realize we won,” chuckled Egan. “I was trying to do anything to win that, just out there battling hard and I was skating after the puck once the buzzer went and then I turned around and tried to catch up and celebrate with my team as much as I could.”

Just a captain doing captain things to help secure a win and it’s not the first time either.

Egan, who collected seven goals and 16 points in his first season as more of an energy-type player, is simply a product of hard work, as he’s developed into a full fledged danger on the ice thanks to his 43 goals and 85 points this season.

He leads by example and has lifted up his teammates when they’re down, including the pivotal moment after Massey’s Game 2 loss to Dauphin, when the team morale was a bit low, but Egan still came in to reassure everything would be fine.

“Always just making sure they were having that right mindset that we were gonna win and that we couldn’t go into a game thinking we were gonna lose,” said Egan of the Game 3 mentality. “We just had to always be on our game and be confident in how we were going to play and not second doubt or kind of have that question in our mind if that team could beat us. We entered every game so confident in the playoffs and I think that was a big thing for us.”

» mdelucataronno@brandonsun.com