Booker Daniel has booked a berth for the Cariboo Cougars in the B.C. Hockey Major Midget League championship.
He scored three goals in a 4-2 win over the Vancouver North East Chiefs Sunday in the third and deciding game of their best-of-three semifinal series.
Daniel, a 17-year-old centre from Vanderhoof, provided instant relief for a tense group of Cougar supporters in the stands at Kin 1 when he completed his hat trick into an empty net with 40 seconds left.
The Cougars will travel to Abbotsford to face the defending champion Fraser Valley Thunderbirds in the best-of-three championship series which starts Friday.
Ryan Tattle made it a nailbiting finish when he redirected a pass in the slot from linemate Dante Ballarin to make it a one-goal game on a Chiefs’ power play with 4:27 left in the third period.
Ballarin had a great crack at the Cougar net in the final minute just before Daniel ended the suspense but goalie Devin Chapman kicked out his pad to preserve the Cariboo lead. Seconds later, Brendan Pigeon’s alert play along the boards sprung Daniel into the clear for his third goal.
“When they scored that second goal everyone was really nervous but we all just battled through it, stuck to our systems and got it done,” said Daniel.
Daniel started the season in the WHL with the Tri-City Americans but suffered a broken fibula and returned to play 26 games in the season for the Cougars, finishing fourth in team scoring with 17 goals and 38 points.
“I was thinking this would be a grinding game, just hitting, so it worked out,” he said. “I haven’t had a hat trick this season, it’s a good time to have it. They fought hard, they’ve got a lot of character on that team, a lot of good players, but we just came out on top.”
The Cougars got the start they’d been looking for all series and jumped out to a 2-0 lead. Curtis Hammond, who scored the double-overtime winner in Game 2, used his speed to get a step ahead of his check down the right wing boards and let go a low wrist shot that found the net on the far side to open the scoring at 6:33.
Near the midway mark of the period, Cougar defenceman Ethan Floris chipped in a high dump-in into the Chiefs’ zone that defenceman Jackson Murphy-Johnson knocked down with his glove but the puck bounced away from him and rolled into the slot for a streaking Daniel and he made it count.
“Just from (Saturday) night and the energy we had from the overtime win we wanted to make sure we kept momentum s that first goal was key for us,” said Cougars head coach Tyler Brough. “We ended up getting it and got some cushion with the second one.”
The Chiefs came close on the power play with about five minutes left in the first period. They nailed the post with a high point shot and seconds later Logan Kurki put the puck off the crossbar. The Chiefs’ power play went to work again in the final minute of the period but the Cougars had the best scoring chance when Connor Fleming stole the puck from Kurki at the Cariboo blueline and raced in on a breakaway. Fleming aimed for the top corner but Logan Terness caught the puck in his trapper with 1.9 seconds left.
The Chiefs had the edge in play in the second period but it didn’t show on the scoreboard and each team scored once. Nicolas Roussel was in the right spot in front to snap in the rebound after Justin Scott fired a shot from the face-off circle, 7:52 into the second.
The Cougars restored their two-goal lead on the power play at the 15:31 mark. Daniel went wide around Scott and let go a shot from the ringette line that found a seam in behind Terness.
In the third period the Cougars tightened up defensively and didn’t show any cracks until later in the period when the Chiefs’ efforts around the net put the onus on Chapman to bail his team out.
Chapman sat on the bench for the first game of the series while Xavier Cannon – the BCHMML’s stingiest netminder with 2.02 goals-against average - stood in to face the Chiefs. Chapman played in Game 2, a 3-2 overtime win for the Cougars. The native of Vanderhoof joined the Cougars a couple months into the season from the BCHL Salmon Arm Silverbacks. His 2.31 average over 14 games was third-best and together they formed the league’s top tandem, alternating starts on most weekends.
“It was a tough decision for us, we’ve got two great goalies and either one we feel can win us a game or win us a championship,” said Brough. “For the most part we’re going back and forth here and we can do that with these two guys. They’re supporting each other and it backs us up when we can go with a guy and he stands tall like Devin did here today.”
The Chiefs haven’t had much success in Prince George since 2015, when they beat the Cougars in their own rink for the league championship. Chiefs head coach Jeff Urekar said his team played well enough to win Sunday, the difference was their inability to bury the puck.
“I thought we outplayed them today, I think the pressure, the zone time, the shots and the chances that we got, we definitely created more,” said Urekar. “It came down to a couple of breakdowns and they were able to capitalize on and sometimes that the difference. “You’ve got to give credit to their goaltender and they were blocking shots out there but I thought we did everything it took to win today, we just didn’t get the bounces.”
The Chiefs outshot the Cougars 32-26.
Fraser Valley swept the Okanagan Rockets in the other semifinal series, winning 3-2 in quadruple overtime Friday and 5-1 on Saturday. The Cougars lost three of the four regular-season games to the T-birds.
“They came here last year and beat us in our building (in the final) and we have the opportunity to do that to them,” said Brough. “It’s a hungry group in there and we’re definitely not satisfied. We just went through a war of a series against a good team and they have every right to feel proud of themselves but we’re not done yet.”
The winner of the Cougars-T-birds series will play the Alberta champion in a best-of-three series April 5-7 in Alberta for the right to represent the Pacific region at the Telus Cup national midget championship in Thunder Bay, Ont., April 22-28.
