By Dan Hermanutz

upset brewing

Wranglers on verge of sweeping Vipers from playoffs

Feb 27, 2020 | 2:46 PM

The Red Deer Vipers are facing elimination in the second round series of the HJHL playoffs after the Sylvan Lake Wranglers won game three of their best-of-seven affair 2-0 Wednesday night at the Servus Arena.

The Wranglers have a stranglehold 3-0 lead in the series and can wrap it up with a win in game four Thursday night (tonight) at the Nexsource Centre in Sylvan Lake (8 p.m.)

The Wranglers opened up the scoring in the first period Wednesday when Austin Kalev scored at the 16:34 mark.

The second period was quiet with not a lot of scoring chances either way.

With 5:55 remaining in the third period, Sylvan Lake hit the dagger when Caileb Berge scored on a two-on-one after Red Deer was caught pinching on the other end while pushing for the tying goal.

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Sylvan goaltender Cameron Loomis-Labrosse was a rock in net, stopping all 24 shots that Red Deer fired his way.

“It was a hard-fought game by both teams. Not much separates us and we were fortunate to come away with the win,” said Wranglers head coach Pat Garritty. “Anytime your goalie can put up a zero in the playoffs, that really helps. He was seeing it well tonight, they had good traffic and were collapsing the net hard, but he stood tall and we’re really happy for him.

“Anytime you win in the playoffs, it’s big. Every game is, and every game gets bigger and we’re just going to get prepared for tomorrow night,” added Garritty.

Red Deer had a first-round bye to rest up and prepare for the second round of playoffs. With them now on the verge of being swept, it brings up the ‘rest versus rust’ conversation.

“Sylvan Lake just wanted it a lot more than we did from the second period on. I don’t know what happened. We stopped talking, we stopped doing a lot of things, we totally just shut down, it’s kind of been a problem all year,” lamented Vipers coach JD Morrical. “We didn’t play a really tough game. We didn’t battle, weren’t near hard enough, we didn’t battle hard enough to win the game, Sylvan deserved it right from the start.”

The Vipers couldn’t get anything going on the night, including going 0-for-3 on the powerplay. The team was out of sync much of the night, not moving their feet and making errant passes.

“This team knows how to play hockey. It’s just when we don’t communicate with each other and we don’t play hard, we’re actually really bad,” Morrical said.