The stars are aligning for the Prince George Spruce Kings.
But it all hinges on their last BCHL regular season game Sunday afternoon (3 p.m.) at Kopar Memorial.
A win over the Powell River Kings will mean the Spruce Kings are in the playoffs.
The Spruce Kings kept those playoff hopes alive when they defeated Powell River 5-4 Saturday at Kopar.
Then they waited for the Chilliwack Chiefs to post a 7-5 victory over the team the Spruce Kings are chasing, the Langley Rivermen.
That loss for the Rivermen (21-23-9-1) ends their regular season and a Sunday win for the Spruce Kings (22-25-4-2) would leave both teams tied in points, each with 52. But the Spruce Kings would be awarded the eighth and final playoff spot because they have more wins than Langley.
A big crowd of 1,505 watched the Spruce Kings take a 4-2 lead over Powell River after two periods. Brock Cummings, Nicolas Papineau (on a penalty shot), Zachary Hachey (with his first BCHL goal) and Kazumo Sasaki staked Prince George to a 4-2 lead after 40 minutes.
Cummings scored again 6:31 into the third period and that was fortunate for the Spruce Kings, whose lead almost slipped away when Eliot Compton scored his second of the game For Powell River and Eli Friedman made it a one-goal game with 11 minutes still to play.
But Charles-Edward Gravel put it into lockdown mode in his crease and improved his BCHL record to 9-3, making 22 saves as the Spruce Kings outshot Powell River 44-26.
In Langley, the visiting Chiefs built a 5-2 lead through 40 minutes but needed some late-game scoring to hang on to the victory.
David Livsics scored his third of the game for the Rivermen early in the third period and Keenan Ingram also scored on a power play to narrow the gap to 5-4 with still 16 minutes left on the clock.
Chilliwack countered with a goal from David Elfering midway through the period but the Rivermen answered with a power-play goal from Jackson Krill.
Langley pulled goalie Dylan Johnson but that backfired when Caleb Malhotra found the empty net. Johnson entered the game 5:32 into the first period when starting goalie Florian Wade allowed three goals on six shots.
The win improved the Chiefs’ first-place record to 37-12-5-0. Chilliwack will face either Langley or Prince George in the first round of playoffs starting next Friday in Chilliwack.
