There’s just over a week left in the regular season for the NWJHL and the league has announced the dates for the playoffs and also a new format for the post-season.
The week of February 12-15 will see the #7 seed Sexsmith Vipers face the #8 seed Fairview Flyers in a best of three play-in round. The winner will advance to the league quarterfinals, which will be a best-of-five round that will run from February 16-28.
Some of the playoffs seeds aren’t set in stone quite yet. Right now, Fort St. John and La Crete are the two teams battling for the #1 and #2 seeds. The Huskies are two points up on the Lumber Barons right now, FSJ has four games left while La Crete has only three to go.
The number three seed has been clinched by the Grande Prairie Wheat Kings, but there’s still a logjam to sort out for the #4, #5 and #6 spots. Beaverlodge is currently at 4 with 39 points but only 1 game left on their schedule. Dawson Creek has 37 points and four games left, while the North Peace Navigators have 35 points with five games still to play.
The winner of the Sexsmith-Fairview series would face the #2 seed in the quarter-finals, number 3 would play number 6 and number 4 would face number 5. The three winners and the number 1 team would be re-seeded for the semi-final round, a best-of-seven that would run from March 1-13. The league championship would be another best-of-seven that would go from March 15-28.
The league champion will advance to the Alberta Junior B provincials happening in Peace River from April 3-7. The Navs are the host team for the event so if they happen to win the league title, whatever team they beat in the finals would get that last spot in the tournament field.
– Kyle Moore, Trending 55 Newsroom
