Falcons sweep Titans, face Meteors in finals
The St. Catharines Rankin Construction Falcons are going back to the finals for the first time in three years.
The Falcons completed a sweep of the Brantford Titans with a 3-0 win Thursday in Brantford to take the Greater Ontario Hockey League Eastern Conference best-of-seven semifinal 4-0.
The Falcons face the Fort Erie Meteors in the Eastern Conference final, likely to begin Friday, April 18 in St. Catharines.
The Meteors swept the Caledonia Corvairs in their semifinal 4-0.
Falcons president of hockey operations/head coach Tyler Bielby was pleased to get the series over with.
“It’s a little easier maybe, especially up 3-0, to get a little loose defensively, so to finish off the series with with a goose egg was real good for our team,” Bielby said. “We didn’t let a lot of pucks through tonight that’s why through two periods, I think they had seven or eight shots on net. That was a result of how we defended in our zone and I’m happy to get the win.”
Hayden Jeffery made 15 saves for the shutout.
Rookie Easton Poirier continued his fine play with his fifth goal of the playoffs to open the scoring just over six minutes into the first period.
Brendan Grenville scored early and Trent Vaillancourt late for St. Catharines in the second period.
“I think we capitalized on our chances when they were there,” Bielby said. “I still would like to have seen us put a few more away to give ourselves a little more breathing room but the truth is we weren’t overly happy with our first period as a team. All the players agreed and coaches agreed so we had a good chat between the first and second and we turned it up a bit in the second and won that period and that brought us home.”
The Falcons had two weeks off after the first round and look as though they will have a week before the finals start, but Bielby isn’t concerned about the extended time on the sidelines.
“It gives us a chance — I think even Fort Erie would agree as well — it gives everybody a chance to kind of get into a normal routine of practice this week and prepare for the opponent and get healthy and just take care of little things,” he said. “We know once that puck drops there’s going to be no love lost. It’ll be hard-fought series and we’ll take the rest now.”
Bielby loves playing at this time of the season.
“I just said to one of the coaches that you know that you’re playing late in season you start taking the IceDogs bus because it’s not usually available earlier,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun as a group. But you know, it’s going to get tougher. The competition gets harder, the time and space becomes less and we have to make sure that we enjoy it but also make sure that the business mindset is there.”
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