We had a change up in captains this year. We lost Patrik Lundback as the captain of Aware. Aware’s front office requested a trade of Justin St-Denis in the hopes of finally bringing the SHL Cup home. We also had Mike Wilson step down from being a captain. Stepping up, we had Harrison Oztemel becoming captain for the new team PEAK Biolabs, and Jordan Ashton becoming the captain for Hertz with Brad Wilson staying with the Novotel Spitfires.
For the first half of the season, Aware was doing the complete opposite of what they did last season, losing 7 of their first 9 games, but they continued to fight and won 5 more games, but this left them in last place of the season. Could captain, Justin St-Denis, pull off another upset to give himself a threepeat?
Hertz did really well in the first half of the season under new captain, Jordan Ashton, only losing 5 of the first 9 games, and they really turned things around in the second half of the season, taking first place at the end of the regular season.
Second new captain, Harrison Oztemel lead new team, PEAK Biolabs to a 5-4 record for the first half of the season and they continued with their dominant streak and took second place at the end of the regular season.
The Novotel Spitfires, led by long time captain Brad Wilson, started off with a 5-4 record, and continued strong and finished off the regular season with 18 points, only two points behind Hertz and PEAK Biolabs.
This season, it was decided to do something different for the playoffs, and that was the first place team got to choose their opponents for the semifinals. Hertz decided to challenge the Novotel Spitfires, which left PEAK Biolabs to face off against Aware.
The Novotel Spitfires dominated Hertz in their series, winning the first game, 5-2 and the second game 5-0 to move on to the final game. Aware won their first game against PEAK Biolabs, but in the second game, PEAK Biolabs won 4-2 to push through to the third game, which PEAK won 5-2.
We were poised for a great game between PEAK Biolabs and the Novotel Spitfires. The Spitfires scored with two and a half minutes left in the first period. PEAK scored early in the second period to tie things up, but with less than two minutes left in the second period to put themselves up by two points. PEAK scored 2 quick goals in the third period to tie things up, but they just couldn’t hold off the Spitfires, and they scored 2 goals late in the third period to give the Novotel Spitfires their first SHL Cup.