Sunday’s regular season finale was a bit of an interesting one for the Prince Albert Mintos.
Although they dropped a 5-2 decision at the Art Hauser Centre to the Saskatoon Blazers, it did give the team an opportunity to scout out the team that they will be facing in the quarter-final round of the 2019 Saskatchewan Midget AAA Hockey League playoffs.
Sunday’s regular season finale was a bit of an interesting one for the Prince Albert Mintos.
Although they dropped a 5-2 decision at the Art Hauser Centre to the Saskatoon Blazers, it did give the team an opportunity to scout out the team that they will be facing in the quarter-final round of the 2019 Saskatchewan Midget AAA Hockey League playoffs.
“I think it’s a bit of a good thing and a bad thing to be in a situation like that,” Mintos forward Gabe Klassen said.
“You get to see what they are all about and get a little bit of an idea of what their systems are like, but you can sometimes ramp things up a bit too much depending on what goes on our there before the playoffs get underway.”
The quarter-final series will get underway on Sunday at the Rod Hamm Memorial Arena at 5:15 p.m.
The Mintos will host the second game at the Art Hauser Centre on Wednesday, March 6, with the third contest set for 7:45 p.m. in Saskatoon on Friday, March 9.
If needed, a fourth game would take place at the Art Hauser Centre on Saturday, March 9 at 7 p.m., while the fifth and final contest would be held at the Rod Hamm Memorial Arena on Sunday, March 10.
“There’s going to be a lot of focus on our systems at practice this week to get ready for this series,” Mintos defenceman Marek Schneider said.
“We’re going to be taking on a really tough team in the first round and we’ll need to be prepared for that challenge.”
While the Mintos already knew that they would enter the playoffs as the sixth seed with a 23-19-2-0 record, they didn’t know their quarter-final opponent until late Sunday afternoon.
The Blazers officially ended up as the third seed when the Regina Pat Canadians won a wild 7-6 affair over the Swift Current Legionnaires.
The Pat Canadians are currently one point back of the Tisdale Trojans for the top spot in the standings ahead of their season finale in Regina against the Blazers on Wednesday night.
Klassen led the way for the Mintos with a pair of goals in Sunday’s contest, which marked his first game back with the team after he was playing for Saskatchewan at the Canada Winter Games in Red Deer last week.
“I think all of us played pretty well given the circumstances,” said Klassen, who was joined on the team by Mintos teammates Logan Cox, Ashton Ferster and Schneider.
“Obviously we didn’t get the start we wanted as they scored in the first minute, but I thought we bounced back and played pretty well. We just need to make sure that we have those full 60-minute efforts in the playoffs.”
Chase Bertholet had a pair of assists for the Mintos, who received a 24-save performance from Carter Woodside.
Josh Nagy has three assists to pace the Blazers’ on offence, while Matthew Pesenti made 30 stops.
Alec Saretzky, Rhett Gibson and Carter Stebbings all found the back of net for the visitors, along with Prince Albert Raiders prospects Nolan Allan and Cole Nagy.
“It’s nice to have a game against the Mintos at this part of the season, especially since we’ll see them here in the playoffs,” Allan said.
“We’ve been battling hard in our practices here lately and we’ve been taking that over into our games over the last month. We’re pretty amped up about what’s ahead.”
