Yeti and Knights Part 2

The Yeti are the defending champions while the Knights remain unbeaten heading into game 1 of their series next Monday.  Its been a really long time, going way back to the early 2000’s since an XHL team finished unbeaten.  The Knights are 2 wins away from a 16-0 season but will be in for their biggest test of the season when they take on the defending champion Yeti.  The Knights swept the regular season series with only one of the games being that close, but none of that means anything going into this series.  To our knowledge, this is Cody’s week to work, but if he would be present, the Yeti could actually be favored to win if they have their full squad.  First thing is first, the Knights could not look past the colonials last night.  If the colonials were ever going to have a chance to compete against them, last night would have been it with Bob, Jay Edmiston and Phil Mace all present.  For the first time in their 4 matchups, the colonials had a sub when the Knights were nice enough to let Zach Foradori fill in again.  Fred has not been able to play due to an illness. Foradori’s presence kept the colonials within striking distance last week but Bob’s 3 goals last night, including 2 first period goals, were not near enough to keep up with the Knights last night.  As mentioned before, Brandon Reiter did most of the scoring in the 2 regular season matchups but everyone in their lineup got involved in the goal scoring these past 2 games.  Andy led the way early in the game with 2 first period goals for the Knights to help give them a 4-2 lead at the end of the first period.  Brandon Reiter and Nate Galentine had their other 2 goals.   About 5 minutes or so into the 2nd period, this game was all but over.  Andy scored their first goal of the 2nd period then Jake scored on a good pass from Noah and the route was on.  A 4-2 lead after 1 got up to 9-2 after 2.  Andy Calvert led the way for the Knights offensively with several goals, mainly in the first and 2nd period.  Brandon Reiter had at least 3 or 4 as well. Jake would go on to score another goal early in the 3rd period to keep the route going.  The lead got up to 12-2 before Bob scored his 3rd goal of the game for the colonials.  The Colonials had some good chances to score early in the game that could have made it in for a better game, but whatever the Knights said in their 3rd period time out last week carried into last night’s game.  Following their time out last week, they were able to break that game open late in the 3rd period and broke open last nights game by the 10 minute mark of the 2nd period.  In total, they outscored the colonials 17-4 after Bob’s 3rd period goal cut the knights lead to 6-5 last week.   The Colonials season ended a little better this year when they got by the play in tournament.  They lost to the Mayhem in the play in last year on a Jason Stamler goal overtime goal.  Believe it or not, this will be Jason Stamler’s first xhl championship appearance.   Game 1 and 2 will be played Monday night with a necessary game 3 to be scheduled for Monday, May 12th.   For those who remember last year, both Yeti’s finals wins came in overtime last year with Ben Rossi scoring 14 minutes into overtime in the first game and Zach Smith scoring about 7 minutes into overtime in the crazy game 3 ending.  The Yeti overcame a 4 goal deficit in game 3 with around 6 minutes to play and got a tying goal from Dave Jewell with less than 20 seconds remaining.  It will be hard to top that off this year, but it will be an intriguing match up with the knights still being undefeated and the Yeti being the defending champions with perhaps an even better roster than last year if Cody is able to make it.  Good luck to both teams.