The St. John’s Maple Leafs will play for their third straight Newfoundland and Labrador Major Midget Hockey League championship.
The Maple Leafs downed the East Coast Blizzard 4-2 Friday night at the Glacier in Mount Pearl and followed up with a 2-0 win Saturday in Goulds to take their best-of-seven semifinal in six games.
St. John’s will face the Western Kings in the best-of-seven final beginning next weekend in Corner Brook. The league-leading Kings swept past the Tri-Pen Osprey in the other semifinal which ended last weekend.
The Leafs knocked off the Kings in playoff series the last two years — prevailing in the 2016 final and a 2017 semifinal — but it will be Western that will be the definite favourite this time after losing just twice in 32 regular-season games and winning seven of their eight meetings with the Leafs (21-9-2). However, of those eight contests, four were decided by a single goal, with another seeing the Kings scoring an empty-net tally late for a two-goal winning margin.
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