STEINBACH, Man. – The Thunder Bay major midget Kings got a pair of goals from Evan Nicholas along with a 20-save shutout courtesy of Ryan Fanti to help lead them to a 3-0 victory over the Winnipeg Wild Friday in Day 2 play at the 2017 TELUS Cup West Regional in Steinbach, Man.
With the victory, Thunder Bay improves to 2-0 at the four-team event and should the Regina Pat Canadians (1-0) defeat the host Eastman Selects (0-1) in Friday’s second game then both the Kings and Pat Canadians would be guaranteed a place in Sunday’s championship game.
Should Eastman win that contest, then the final day of round robin play Saturday will determine the finalists.
Regina and Thunder Bay will also meet in round robin action Saturday at 1:30 p.m., in what could just be a tune-up, depending on the result of Friday’s final match-up.
Against the Wild, a fast-paced first period was scoreless thanks to the efforts of starting goaltenders Fanti of the Kings and Winnipeg’s Niklas Anderson.
The Hockey Northwestern Ontario title holders would open the scoring early into the middle stanza as Nicholas was sent in alone on a breakaway and made no mistake, snapping the night’s initial tally past Anderson.
It stayed 1-0 Thunder Bay throughout the rest of the frame thanks to some solid penalty killing and shot blocking by the Kings’ defensive corps as well as a number of quality stops by Fanti.
An early strike in the final frame allowed the Kings to go up by a pair as Nicholas was credited with his second of the contest 60 seconds into the stanza with assists going to Jayden Wojciechowski and Cody Bruchkowski.
Robert Tyska supplied some insurance with 4:23 to go thanks to a crisp feed from Fletcher Anderson with Jacob Brown also adding a helper on the final offensive effort of the contest.
Thunder Bay outshot Winnipeg 25-20 in the win.
Sunday’s title game goes at 3 p.m. ET and will feature the top team teams in round robin competition looking for a berth to the TELUS Cup Canadian midget championship, April 24-30, in Prince George, B.C.
TELUS CUP West Regional
Schedule/Results
At the T.G. Smith Centre
Steinbach, Man.
Thursday, March 30
Regina 2 Winnipeg 1
Thunder Bay 5 Eastman 1
Friday, March 31
Thunder Bay 3 Winnipeg 0
Eastman vs. Regina 9 p.m.
Saturday, April 1
Regina vs. Thunder Bay 1:30 p.m.
Winnipeg vs. Eastman 4:45 p.m.
Sunday, April 2
2nd round robin vs. 1st round robin 3 p.m.
Winner advances to TELUS Cup Canadian National Midget Championship, April 24-30, in Prince George, B.C.
