Led by the tournament’s most unlikely mid-season addition, the equally surprising West Kelowna Warriors became the 10th Okanagan team in history to win the RBC Cup by defeating the host Lloydminster Bobcats 4-0 in the national junior A hockey championship game on Sunday.
Goaltender Matthew Greenfield, acquired by the Warriors in December from the Nebraska’s Tri-City Storm of the United States Hockey League, stopped all 48 shots he faced in the title game that returned the RBC Cup to the Okanagan for the first time since the Penticton Vees turned the trick in 2012.
It was also the first junior A championship by a Central Okanagan since the Kelowna Spartans won the national crown (formerly the Centennial Cup) in 1993. The Warriors did it in their 10th year as a BCHL franchise.
Jonathan Desbiens, the Warriors’ leading scorer with 44 goals during the B.C. Hockey League's regular season, scored what would stand up as the winning goal at 5:21 of the first period, while Reed Gunville made it 2-0 with the only goal of the second.
A shorthanded marker by veteran Liam Blackburn midway through the third period all but sealed it for the Warriors, who managed 27 shots on the Lloydminster net. Rylan Yaremko scored an empty netter at 17:24 of the third.
But it was Greenfield, the player of the game for a second straight day in the RBC playoffs, who stole the show with several spectacular saves, particularly in the first period when the Bobcats fired 18 shots his way. He stopped 14 in the second period and 16 more in the third.
Adding to the significance of Greenfield’s performance is the fact the Parkland, Fla. native was playing in only his third game since suffering a second concussion in a nine-day period. He was diagnosed with his first in the BCHL final series against the Chilliwack Chiefs.
Perhaps West Kelowna fans should have seen the Warriors’ remarkable march to the 2016 RBC Cup coming when Greenfield, playing in his first game on Dec. 19, stopped 41 shots to stonewall (2-0) the juggernaut Penticton Vees (50-7-0-1) at Royal LePage Place.
Greenfield, who played the previous two seasons with the Kitchener Rangers of the Ontario Hockey League, went on to post a 13-4-1 record the rest of the way in the regular season (the Warriors finished in second place in the Interior Division with a 38-17-3 record) and then anchored the Warriors' improbable run in the playoffs with a 14-8 record, a 2.25 goals-against average and a .932 save percentage. Included were four wins over the heavily favoured Vees in the BCHL’s Interior Division best-of-seven series.
After surviving a hard-fought Round 3 three-team double round-robin series with the Chiefs and Nanaimo Clippers, the Warriors downed Chilliwack in the BCHL’s best-of-seven final series for the right to represent the league at the five-team Western Canada Cup.
Warriors, who would go on to play in a total of 35 playoff games this spring. In all they played 93 games – finishing 62-25-6 – and were one overtime goal away from being eliminated by the Nanaimo Clippers in the BCHL semifinals.
West Kelowna went 4-1 in the WCC tournament in Estevan, winning the cup with a 6-0 triumph over the Brooks Bandits of the Alberta Junior A Hockey League in the final and earning a berth in the RBC Cup tournament.
As he was in the BCHL series clincher against Chilliwack, Keelan Williams proved an invaluable reliever, stepping in for the injured Greenfield in net and giving the Warriors more stellar goaltending, winning three games at the WCC.
With Williams winning two of three games, the Warriors finished third in round-robin play in the RBC Cup with a 3-1 record. He then gave way to Greenfield for the final game of preliminary play, as well as the 4-1 victory over the Brooks Bandits in Saturday’s semifinal and Sunday’s championship game.
Hockey Canada photos of championship game.
West Kelowna RBC Cup statistics
More to come.
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