The playoff season in the Newfoundland Senior Hockey League begins tonight at Twin Rinks, where the St. John’s Caps play host the Clarenville Caribous in the Game 1 of their best-of-seven Eastern Division semifinal.
It’s the opener of a provincial senior hockey playoff schedule that has a different look this season. Four teams from the NSHL Eastern Division are taking part in playoffs, while the two teams that make up the Central Division — the Grand Falls Windsor Cataracts and Gander Kelly Ford Flyers — are facing each other in a best-of-seven series.
The Cats-Flyers winner will advance to the Herder Memorial Trophy provincial senior final to take on whichever team eventually emerges from the east.
The post-season arrangement is part of the agreement that saw the Central-West and East Coast senior leagues come under the NSHL umbrella for the 2018-19 season.
The changes included the 2018 Herder champion Caribous moving from the central circuit to join the four teams from the ECSHL, with the five playing a round-robin inter-divisional schedule. The eastern teams also had a limited interlocking schedule against the Cats and Flyers, who were left in a two-team Central Division. That meant Gander and Grand Falls-Windsor played the majority of their games against each other; they went head-to-head in 10 of their 17 regular-season games.
Today’s Caps-Caribous semifinal opener (7:30 p.m.) begins in St. John’s, but it is Clarenville, which finished first in the Eastern Division, that holds home-ice advantage over the fourth-place Caps in the series, which continues 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Eastlink Events Centre in Clarenville.
The other Eastern semifinal, which has the second-place Conception Bay Blues tangling with the third-place Southern Shore Breakers, starts 7:10 pm. Saturday at the Conception Bay South Arena before switching to the Southern Shore Arena in Mobile 8 p.m. Sunday.
The Flyers (13-4-0), who had the best overall winning percentage among the seven provincial senior teams, host Games 1 and 2 of their series with the Cataracts Saturday and Sunday at the Steele Community Centre. Grand Falls-Windsor brings an overall 10-5-2 record into the matchup. In the regular-season series against Gander, the Cats were 4-6, including two overtime setbacks.
