“Original Four” members battle in SPHL semifinals

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – After winning a fierce and exhausting battle in the first-round against the Fayetteville FireAntz, the Knoxville Ice Bears have little time to recover before facing heated rival Huntsville Havoc in the second round of the SPHL playoffs. The series kicks off Wednesday night in Huntsville. “I expect it’s going to be a high-paced, energetic series,” Knoxville Head Coach Marc Rodgers said. “They are our biggest rival. We’re just as energized as they are and were ready just as much as they are.’ Knoxville has faced Huntsville 12 times this season, with varying levels of success. Knoxville lost the regular season series 5-7, with all five wins on home ice.

If Knoxville has any hope of moving on to the finals, they are going to have to find a way to win on the road. Playing the body and using the team’s size are going to be key to winning in the Havoc’s barn. Knoxville has nine players on the roster over 6-feet tall with six of those weighing more than 200 pounds. Huntsville is smaller but quicker, with just five skaters over six feet and three on the plus side of 200. “We’re big and real physical but they’re small but real, real fast. We really have to come out and be extremely physical on these guys, especially their defensemen. If we can throw our body around and really wear them down physically, that will go to our advantage,” Rodgers said. “We are going to have to keep it real simple – keep it out of the middle and use our speed to get through the neutral zone.”  Knoxville also has to face two strong goalies between the pipes. Huntsville goalie Mark Sibbald is 4-1 against Knoxville with a .891 save percentage while Dan McWhinney is 3-3 with a .863 save percentage. Lots of pucks on net may be the best way to rattle these solid goalies. Knoxville had 181 shots on goal in the first series. There is another simple strategy in regards to beating the Havoc net minders: traffic in front of the net. If Sibbald is in net, he will have a lot of company around the blue paint of the goal crease. “He [Sibbald] is a very good goaltender and he challenges the shooter very well, but when he has somebody in front of him, he seems to scramble a little bit,” Rodgers said. “We have to make sure we throw some traffic and a lot of pucks at net and create those scoring chances.” Knoxville goalie Andrew Gallant struggled against Huntsville in the regular season, going 4-3-2 with a .892 save percentage. Gallant is going to need plenty of help from his defense, especially when it comes to turnovers. “We don’t want to give them the opportunities. They are a trapping team which looks for opportunities,” Rodgers said. “We can’t turn the puck over. We have to get it deep and get behind their D and work them behind the goal line. If we do that, we’re going to be fine, but if we end up turning pucks over, then we’ll be in big trouble.” Another concern for Knoxville has to be its non-existent power play after going 1-for-22 in the playoff series, a 4.5 percent conversion rate compared to a 21.4 percent conversion rate during the regular season. Knoxville’s number one line of Kevin Swider, Tim Vitek and Bobby Joe Pelkey combined for a total of 23 goals in the 12 games against Huntsville during the regular season and has been on fire since the returnof Vitek after serving a two-game suspension. Pelkey notched three goals, including the game-winning goal in Sunday’s overtime contest, four assists and a staggering 38 shots on goal in the first series. Swider posted five assists in three games while Vitek tallied two goals and two assists in his first game back from suspension. With all of that production from the first line, Huntsville will put a major focus on stopping that trio. If the Havoc do that, Knoxville’s second and third lines will have to create some scoring chances. Forwards Frankie Furdero, Kyle Bochek and Travis Hanson had a decent first series but will need to step it up and give the first line some support. If Knoxville can once again put all of the pieces together, it stands a good shot at reaching the President’s Cup finals. Standing in the way of a third consecutive trip to the championship series for Knoxville are the Huntsville Havoc. Huntsville has yet to make an appearance in the finals and would dearly love to do it at the expense of its long time rival. “There’s definitely a rivalry. You can feel it,“ Huntsville coach Randy Murphy said. “I think it’s one of those deals where you see each other so much throughout the course of the regular season and it has built up quite a nice rivalry for one another and its just going to continue into this series.” The Havoc have matched up well against the Ice Bears this season, winning seven of the twelve meetings. Of those victories, two came on the road at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum. Knoxville did not win a single game at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville – a potentially important fact since the Havoc will have the home ice advantage. That home ice edge was a key factor in the first round playoff series that Huntsville played against the Pensacola Ice Flyers. Each team won on the other’s ice but the deciding game three was played at the Von Braun. The Havoc won that one 5-4 in overtime as Brett Liscomb scored his third goal of the game in the extra period to send Huntsville into the semifinals. “You can only take so much out of the regular season but knowing that (having won twice in Knoxville) can definitely work in our favor towards having a little bit of an edge in the back of our minds we know that we’ve had success in their rink,” Murphy said. As Murphy sees it, the two teams are pretty evenly matched going into the best-of-three battle. “If you go down the checklist and look to give the edge to one team or the other in regards to offense, defense and goaltending, I think it is pretty straight up (even),” he said. “I think both teams know how to score goals. I think the goaltending, you can call it a wash. I just think it’s one of those deals where it’s going to come down to who wants it more at this time of year.” Four Huntsville players put up double-digit points against the Ice Bears. Mike MacDonald (6-7-13),Justin Rohr (8-4-12), Mike Carter (7-5-12) and Travis Kauffeldt (2-8-10) each had success against Knoxville and all of them except for Carter held a positive number in the plus/minus stats. In the first round playoff series against Pensacola, Rohr led the Havoc with six points and a plus-three followed by Liscomb who had four goals and Kauffeldt (1-3-4, plus-1). As far as the defensemen go, rookie Dean Petiot, Adam Lukacovic and veteran Bill McCreary led the point parade against Knoxville with five points each. Petiot was also an impressive plus-6, meaning that he was on the ice for six more Huntsville than he was for Knoxville scores. McCreary had two assists in the Pensacola series to lead the defensemen in scoring. On the goaltending front, Mark Sibbald and Dan McWhinney almost evenly split the 12 games down the middle with replacement goalie Jeremy Symington having appeared in one game. Sibbald (4-1-0, 3.33 goals against) had a bit more luck in beating the Ice Bears than McWhinney (3-3-0, 3.83 goals against). McWhinney (2-1, 2.53 goals against) saw every second of the action in the first round of the playoffs. Special teams wise, Huntsville scored 11 goals in 66 power play opportunities against Knoxville during the regular season for a success rate of 16.7 percent. On the penalty kill, the Havoc were successful 80.7 percent of the time, allowing 11 Ice Bear goals in 57 man-advantages against. So far in the playoffs, Huntsville is 4-for-22 on the power play (18.18 percent) while posting the second best penalty kill in the league at an efficiency rate of 87.5 percent, allowing just two goals in 16 times short handed. Murphy said that special teams play could be a factor in determining the outcome of the series but only if the teams and game officials allow them to. “I think it’s one of those deals where if you let special teams become a factor, they will be,” he said. “It’s going to depend on the number of penalties that are called. It’s going to depend on what the standards (what the referees call) are going to be for the series. If they stay consistent like they did in the first series, then the special teams are going to play a huge role because there is no let up let up in terms of the amount of penalties called.” Coming out of the Pensacola series, Murphy said that a key for him is to have his guys playing within themselves and not doing too much to complicate their schemes. “(We need to) Simplify the game and not try to do too much in other people’s positions. At this time of year, it’s natural to want to do a little extra,” he said. “It doesn’t always necessarily come in the form of doing other people’s jobs. What we tried to focus on was just trying to do a little more through effort, not through over thinking the game.” So what does the coach think his team needs to do in order to win the series?  Murphy believes that what the Havoc players do away from the puck will spell success. “I think we need to play well away from the puck. The guys have to be aware of what is going on on the ice,” Murphy said. “We know we have to have that against a team like Knoxville because they’re so good with the puck.” Editor’s prediction:  Both teams had to work hard – especially Knoxville – to get past the first round. The Havoc can’t allow the Swider-Vitek-Pelkey trio to explode like they did against Fayetteville but holding them in check is near impossible. As Murphy said, the series will come down to who wants it more and with their experience and a regained swagger, Knoxville takes the series in three games. Contact the authors at kristina.shands@prohockeynews.com and don.money@prohockeynews.com