BOISE — It’s been a while since the Idaho Steelheads have entered a Kelly Cup playoff series as an underdog. With last year’s record-breaking regular season, and a couple of postseasons disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s been five years to be exact.
But that’s just the situation the Steelheads find themselves in now, as they enter the Mountain Division Finals Series as the lower seed to the Kansas City Mavericks, winners of the Brabham Cup for best regular season record.
“They’re a skilled team, they can score goals, and they’re very solid defensively,” said Idaho coach Everett Sheen. “It’s going to be a good test for us, but I feel like for once we don’t have the pressure on us in the series like the last five series we’ve been in. So, it’s kind of a nice feeling to be the underdog and kind of come back with that little bit of a chip on our shoulder.”
Game 1 of the series is on Saturday at Cable Dahmer Arena in Independence, Missouri, with the Mavericks also hosting Game 2 on Sunday. If the Steelheads can get at least one of those games on the road, they’ll come back to Boise with a chance to close out the best-of-seven series with three straight home games.
“We’re going to start on the road here and our goal is to get at least one, two would be great,” said Idaho defenseman Matt Register. “This year, it’s kind of nice not having all this pressure on us, they’re the ones who finished first place in the league and had all those accomplishments. We know how that felt last year, so it’s going to be nice to just roll in there, just play our game and play some fun road hockey.”
Last season, the Steelheads set ECHL regular season records with 58 wins and 119 points, on their way to the Brabham Cup. As favorites in all four rounds, they made their way to the Kelly Cup Finals, where they were swept by the Florida Everblades.
This season, it was the Mavericks who took the league by storm. While they weren’t setting records quite like the Steelheads, their 54 wins were still fourth-most all-time, while their 114 points were fifth best.
“I would say they probably feel a little more pressure than we do going into this series,” said Steelheads forward and captain A.J. White. “They had a tremendous regular season, winning the Brabham Cup and the Mountain Division. It’s going to be a good test. It’s going to be one of those things that we want to go in there and prove ourselves, just like they want to prove themselves, so it’s going to be two really good teams going at it.”
White and linemate Will Merchant are the only two players leftover from the Steelheads the last time they were the lower-seeded team in a playoff series. In the 2019 Mountain Division Finals, the Steelheads dropped the first three games to the higher-seeded Tulsa Oilers before eventually falling in six.
COVID-19 canceled the 2020 playoffs and the 2020-21 Steelheads season and Idaho missed the playoffs in 2022 before winning the Brabham Cup last season.
When it comes to this season, the Mavericks are a bit of an unknown compared to the rest of their Mountain Division foes. The two teams have not met since a three-game series at Idaho Central Arena Jan. 10-13 and have played just six times total this season.
The Steelheads went 2-3-1 in the regular season against the Mavericks, including 0-2-1 in their three games at home.
“Our roster looks completely different from the last time we saw them,” said Sheen. “Yeah, they got us in the three games (at home), but each one of those games we had every chance to win it. But we’re a much-improved team, a much-improved roster since the last time we saw them.”
The series will match up the top two offenses in the ECHL from the regular season, with Kansas leading the league with 305 goals and Idaho in second, just two goals behind the Mavericks.
“They’ve got a lot of weapons, honestly, all their forwards are pretty skilled,” said White. “We think our best chance is to be in a good productive system like we were (in the first round) against Allen. We’re pretty solid defensively, which we’ll need, we just need to let our offense, our forecheck and our skills shine through hard work.”
Getting the first chance to step in in net for the Steelheads will be Bryan Thomson, who started Games 4 and 5 of the Allen series after coming in the third period of Idaho’s Game 3 loss.
Jake Kielly started the first three games in the series, including a shutout in Game 2. With three games scheduled in Allen in three days, Sheen said the plan had always been to start Thomson in Game 4 and after Kielly let up four goals in the first two periods of Game 3, Idaho decided to let Thomson get some looks in the third period to prepare him for the next day.
Over the past two games, Thomson stopped 63 of the 67 shots he’s faced.
“It’s great having two guys that can step in and do their job,” said Sheen. “Jake did his job getting us the first two wins, then Thomson stepped in when we needed him to and closed it out. We’re just going to ride the momentum while we can.”
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