The Saskatoon Saints have for the first time in franchise history have won their division and their conference. The Saints finish the regular season second best in the TFHL only two points behind the Flames in the West. "The city and our fans are ecstatic. We have never had such a consistent and successful regular season. We have a very young team, and we expected that we would be competitive over the next couple seasons but this is a pleasant surprise for the regular season but we now have to consider the playoffs a whole other season starting tomorrow." At his playoff press conference this afternoon, Young continued on and analyzed the match up against the Rednexs. "Despite the fact that we finished 21 pts ahead of the Rednexs this season, I think our teams are almost completely even. They have a solid goaltender, good young depth and some magnificent goal scoring on their top line. We can only win this series if we can shut down their top line of Lindstrom, Bertuzzi, and Kovalev and use our greater depth on our second and third lines to outscore the opposition."
The series will likely be a high scoring battle as the Saints finish the season tied for the second best Team Scoring in the TFHL. However, the goaltending in this series is the greatest unknown. Cloutier for the Saints, who led the Achaeans to their first ever TFHL Championship last year is looking to repeat again with the Saints and capture their first Championship this offseason. With the Saints, Dan Cloutier, 30, had an impressive 13-5-3 record with a 2.38 GAA anbd a 9.14 Save %. The Rednexs have a similar goaltender, in age and style. Brent Johnson, 29, hopes to build on past playoff series wins with the upset against the Saints in the 1st round. Many hockey analysts consider the Rednexs with their top offensive line and Johnson in net as the darkhorse of the East. If it were not for a recent slump, the Rednexs would of easily captured their Division title. This series features too old-TFHL GM's with Ambrose Garvey (Rednexs) and Geoffrey Young (Saints) and should certainly be a hard-fought and long series. The series begins tomorrow night in Purgatory, Saints' home arena downtown Saskatoon.
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