Home semifinals locked in for Stampede and Thunder

The road to the New Zealand Ice Hockey League title will go through Queenstown or Dunedin. And dare we hope of an all-south battle between the Stampede and the Thunder? Both southern teams will host NZIHL semifinals on August 7-8. The Queenstown-based Stampede will host the Canterbury Red Devils, and the Dunedin Thunder will host the West Auckland Admirals. Both semifinals are two-game encounters, the team winning 2-0, or on aggregate, progressing to the best-of-three final. If the Stampede and Thunder win their respective semifinals, they will meet in a mouth-watering final in Queenstown on August 22-23. The Thunder had the weekend off as their regular season was complete, but they still had a keen interest in the Stampede’s clash against the Admirals. If the West Auckland team had managed to beat the odds and leave Queenstown with two wins, they would have leapfrogged the Thunder into second place. Two Stampede wins, however, kept the standings unchanged. The Stampede (36 points) finished top, followed by the Thunder (23) and the Admirals (23). The Red Devils (19) and the Botany Swarm (12) had one dead-rubber game left on Sunday. The Stampede pummelled the Admirals 8-1 in their clash on Friday night. Mitchell Frear and scoring machine Conner Jean gave the Stampede a 2-0 lead in the first period. Jean, Lachlan Frear and Mitchell Frear scored inside the first 8min of the second period to lock the game away, and after an Admirals consolation, Lachlan Frear made it 6-1 near the end of the period. Max Macharg and Jean iced victory in the third. Jean added a pair of assists to his hat-trick, Dylan Devlin and Lachlan Frear each had two assists, and Joel Gerard had 39 saves in goal. Game two on Saturday night was not so one-sided. Axel Ruski-Jones opened the scoring for the Stampede but Sebastian Stephen pulled one back for the visitors near the end of the first period. Rinse and repeat in the second period — Lachlan Frear put the Stampede back in front before Roscoe Eade equalised. Alexander Regan stunned the loyal home fans when he fired the Admirals in front, but Ollie Ruski-Jones made it 3-3 with 7min 48sec on the clock. Three minutes later, that man Jean scored the winner on a Devlin assist. Jean has reclaimed the NZIHL scoring lead with 45 points (23 goals, 22 assists), followed by Red Devils star Alex Gagnon (42 points) and Dunedin pair Luke Stegmann (41) and Cole Beckstead (40). • The Dunedin Thunder women nearly caused the upset of the season on Saturday night. They were reasonably firm underdogs against the Auckland Steel, understandable given the New Zealand Women’s Ice Hockey League leaders were a perfect 10 from 10 this season. But the Thunder were not intimidated as they took the runaway league leaders to overtime. Abbey Heale gave the Thunder a 1-0 lead with an unassisted goal in the first period at the Dunedin Ice Stadium. Lauren Askenazy equalised for the Steel on the power play in the second. That was the end of regulation scoring, however, so to overtime it went, and there were just 57sec left on the clock when Jasmine Horner-Pascoe fired home the winner for Auckland. Samantha Winder had a huge night in goal for the Thunder with 40 saves. The teams were playing again in a dead rubber on Sunday. The four NZWIHL teams will gather in Christchurch this weekend for their finals. The Thunder will play the Wakatipu Wild in one semifinal, and the Steel will be favoured to beat the Canterbury Inferno in the other. hayden.meikle@odt.co.nz