VANCOUVER – Having enjoyed a bye through the Canada West quarter-finals, the number one ranked UBC Thunderbirds officially begin their postseason run this weekend hosting the Saskatchewan Huskies for a best-of-three conference semifinal at the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre.
Battling the Huskies in a playoff series for the third straight season, the defending conference champion T-Birds can advance to a second straight Canada West Final – and earn a berth at the U SPORTS National Championship – with a victory over their prairie rivals.
Finishing the regular season with a conference record 24 wins – and entering the playoffs on a 12 game win streak – the T-Birds may be the clear favourites over Saskatchewan, but nothing is being taken for granted when so much is now on the line.
"Moving into this week, the energy and everything – it's becoming real. We're feeling exited and energized and ready to go," said UBC head coach
Graham Thomas who boasts a 28-16 conference playoff record in his 10 previous seasons. "We had an historic regular season in almost every category, but that's behind us now. It's a new season and we just have to continue to have our same focus and process and not change much."
The Huskies advanced to face the T-Birds in a rematch of last year's Canada West Final after an upset sweep over the host Calgary Dinos in last weekend's quarter-final.
UBC and Saskatchewan last met in mid-January in Vancouver where the T-Birds completed the season series win over the Huskies with 3-1 and 6-0 victories. The 'Birds outscored the Huskies by a 13-5 margin over their four regular season matchups with Saskatchewan's lone win against UBC coming by way of a 3-2 decision back in early October.
"They're going to come in very motivated, they're a fast group, they always play with a lot of speed and a lot of aggression and intensity," said Thomas of the Huskies. "They have great goaltending, they're well coached, they're going to be structured. We need to respect them and that they're going to give us their absolute best, and they will. They're going to come at us and drive the net hard and attack us so we just got to be prepared to deal with that. We have to get back to not thinking about what happened in the past, none of that matters."
The past may not matter, but the many recent playoff battles may very well loom in the minds of those participating. This weekend's semifinal is both the third straight postseason matchup between the two perennial rivals and the fifth such meeting in the last six seasons. The T-Birds have won three of those four previous series with the Huskies last notching a series win over UBC in 2018.
While UBC has the decided edge on offence heading into the series having scored at nearly twice the clip of the Huskies during the regular season (3.46 goals per game compared to Saskatchewan's 1.75), defensively the teams are much more evenly matched. The Huskies' greatest strength is likely their goaltending duo of Camryn Drever and Colby Wilson, both of whom put up a .938 regular season save percentage.
But no Canada West goaltender was capable of topping second year T-Bird
Elise Hugens' numbers this past season as she led the way in goals against average (1.05) and save percentage (.949).
While facing a potentially stiff challenge in net, the T-Birds will be relying on scoring depth that carried them throughout the year on a team that boasted five skaters with at least 20 points.
Game one of the best-of-three semifinal gets underway at 7:00 p.m. PT on Friday, February 24 at the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre. Game two is set for Saturday at 7:00 p.m. with game three – if necessary – scheduled for 3:00 p.m. on Sunday.
Tickets are on sale now and the series will be streamed live on
Canada West TV.
