ecn ECN’s “VHL Now!” 9th Edition “Playoffs Part 1”

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ECN’s “VHL Now!”

9th Edition “Playoffs Part 1”

Hello there, another week and we are back with another “VHL Now!” This week we shall talk about Playoffs! With Toronto, Vancouver, Riga and Helsinki in the second round, we will surely see some amazing games and we have to look at them and see who will be victorious!

As always, if you have any suggestions, questions about ECN, be sure to write and I will do my best to answer!

So, firstly, let’s do a little recap of what happened in the first round of S67 VHL playoffs where in North American conference Calgary Wranglers faced Vancouver Wolves and in European conference Riga Reign matched up against Moscow Menace. 

CGY-VAN
7 Game series that ended with Vancouver being on top again, second season in a row. It was clear that CGY was lacking offence from the day One of VHL playoffs. Even though on paper Calgary should gone past Vancouver with ease, it was the amazing play that continued from the regular season from Vanouver’s first Power-play unit helped them push through Brick Wahl, who had an amazing run this post-season. The question is – will the next opponents be able to silence Rauno Palo and Beau Louth?

RIG-MOS
Riga Reign had a fairly easy run through menacing Moscow lineup. It was interesting to see that even the disappointment that we call Hunter Hearst-Helmsley pushed and helped his team to win. Maybe this will be a showing of old man’s resurgence? Moscow is still a truly young team and will be a contender in seasons to come, just not right now. Good to know that players like Edward Vigneault, Jet Jaguar and Mat Tocco are showing their best game in playoffs!

Unless counting non-existent offence from Calgary, there weren’t many surprises. Next round should be truly interesting.

Looking at the current lineups and games that have already been played, both series are tied 1-1. Let’s look at each pair individually!

VAN-TOR
Toronto has been a true surprise to most of the people around VHL. A truly dominating performance in regular season with a well balanced team that in most cases should have been considered a good playoff team but surely not a Nr.1 contender. Toronto has a very seasoned and experienced lineup with players like Oyorra Arroyo, Ryan Sullivan Jr., Tzuyu and Veran Dragomir. It would surely be a great ending to a career for both O.Arroyo and V.Dragomir to win the cup. With 7 points in 2 games played for Dragomir, he is currenty the most valuable player that a team could want and he could be the secret weapon that will help to beat already tired Vancouver team. For Vanouver, the only thing they can hope for is the quality and effectiveness of their Power-play and ability to stop high flying offence from Toronto!

RIG-HSK
Defending champions going against one of the most consistent teams in VHL for the past few seasons? This will clearly be a great match up! Helsinki has to rely on the ability to score from their star players – Julian Borwinn, Kronos Bailey, Dan Wilinsky and Matt Thompson. For Riga, this match-up might prove to be too much to handle as Toronto is not only an offensively powerful squad, they can also be considered a defensive juggernaut. If Riga will be able to reign over Alexander Pepper and his amazing plays this season, they might be able to push for wins.

Thanks for reading this week’s “VHL Now!”. Hope you will tune back next week with Part 2 of VHL Playoffs, where we shall see the results of the second round!
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