The Fernie Ghostrider started off round three red-hot, winning both games one and two against Beaver Valley, despite the Nitehawks having home-ice advantage.
“We had two good games with them in the regular season and it’s going to be a fun, fast, hard series,” said Ghostriders captain Taylor Haggerty of their matchup against the Nitehawks in an interview on kijhl.ca
Ben Skarsen’s goal two minutes into the first opened the scoring for the series. Beaver Valley’s Boris Hristov got both of his team’s goals of the night, with the first coming halfway through the first.
Fernie’s Cole Fournier gave the team their lead back early in the second, before Hristov’s second goal tied things back up. A second goal from Fournier with just one second left in the second period would prove to be the game winner and the Ghostriders took a 3-2 win in game one.
Skarsen’s stellar post-season play carried on into game two; he would score his fourth and fifth playoff goals early in the first period. Taylor Haggerty would then tack another on shortly after giving the Riders a sturdy 3-0 lead heading into the second.
Cole Fournier scored on the power play just over five minutes into the second, with Eli Neilsen getting his first of the post season just 36 seconds later, and Fernie was suddenly up 5-0.
The Nitehawks put themselves on the board with a goal from Lohgan Nimmo, starting a back-and-forth to close out the second, including a second goal of the night for Haggerty.
The third remained scoreless until a short-handed goal from Beaver Valley’s Lucas Gartner, which was followed up from one from Nathan Simm, but it would prove to be too little too late and Nitehawks came away from game two on home ice with a 6-4 loss.
Fernie will look to keep this momentum rolling into games three and four on home ice on Tuesday and Wedneday, Mar. 26 and 27, as the battle for the Kootenay Conference Championship carries forward en route to the Teck Cup