ecn ECN's "VHL Now!" 10th Edition "Playoffs Part 2"

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ECN's "VHL Now!" 10th Edition "Playoffs Part 2"

 

ECN is back this week with another VHL Now! This time we shall be looking into both teams that went to the finals, look what are their strengths and who is going to take the cup! As always, if you have anything you want to suggest, be sure to write and ECN will do all what we can to make our content better!

As we already saw, North American conference winner Vancouver shocked many with their quality defensive game and youth infused offence. They were forced to fight against 2 experienced opponents in Calgary and Toronto. While they had trouble facing Calgary, they seemed to move swiftly through Toronto in round 2 where they needed only 5 games to move to Finals. When it comes to European conference, Helsinki Titans faced against extremely strong Riga team that pushed Helsinki to 7 game series. It is interesting to see that 2 teams who seemingly under-performed in regular season changed the way they play and pushed hard in playoffs. 

Both Helsinki and Vancouver are good teams that will need to rely on their star players to crush defence of their opponents. Currently, when series are tied 1-1, Finals can still move in favour of both teams, so it is not clear who in the end will hoist the cup.

Vancouver

Their success can not be pinpointed at any specific place on their roster. Yes, both Beau Louth and Rauno Palo are still showing why they dominated regular season, Shawn Glade and Denver Wolfe are providing quality offensive game from the blue line and their goaltender, Ismond Kingfisher, it playing quality hockey in net. It seems that everyone on their team in contributing. If there would be one player that would need to be named as someone who is shining in their role lately, it would be Julius Freeman. He is looking like the best player to come out of the S66 Draft. With HHH being a slight disappointment in the regular season, Julius Freeman has been on fire. In regular season he was over point per game and now in playoffs, he is showing that he is the future of Vancouver!

Helsinki

Not really many surprises there. The best penalty kill seen in VHL is past few seasons, amazing goal-tending coming from Alexander Pepper and fabulous play of Dan Wilinsky is proving why the S66 Champions should be here. ECN had many discussions about how big of a role Dan Wilinsky has in Helsinki, considering that he not only leads his team in points, but he also is the most physical player there. It is interesting that for Helsinki, the issues are not in special teams, but are mainly concentrated in 5on5 hockey. In Finals it will be crucial to see Matt Thompson improve his shooting percentage as currently in 9 playoff games played he is shooting abysmal 5.7%. That is not even comparable to the level we want to see from one of the best goalscorers in VHL past few seasons. We have to see how Helsinki will play in the next couple of games and then evaluate if some major line changes are necessary. Maybe there is a need to move up a player like Bert Meyers who has been playing an amazing hockey past 9 games considering he is averaging under 10 minutes per game and has been not only a + player, but also  managed to get more points than Orion Slade and Jordan Tonn who are both playing over 25 minutes each game. 

In the end, it will be a question of who will be better at making smart line changes and using their strengths. All in all – finals are promising to be a great showing of skill and dedication to the game we all love!

Tune back in next week for some off-season madness here in VHL! Brought to you by Frostbeard Entertainment!