The East Coast Senior Hockey League playoffs begin tonight at Jack Byrne Arena in Torbay, where The Bigs Northeast Eagles play host to the Conception Bay Blues in the opening game of a best-of-five first-round series.
It’s one of two opening-round matchups in what are being labelled as elimination series. The other, between the Clarenville Ford Caribous and Harbour Grace Ocean Enterprises CeeBee Stars, starts Saturday night at the Eastlink Centre in Clarenville.
Tonight’s game in Torbay is a rematch of the teams’ regular-season finale a week ago, when the homestanding Eagles doubled the Blues 8-4. It was a result that moved Northeast into fourth place, a point ahead of Conception Bay, giving them home-ice advantage in this series.
The winners of the Blues-Eagles matchup and the one between the third-place Caribous and sixth-place CeeBees will advance to the semifinals to face either the defending champion Southern Shore Puglisevich Breakers or St. John’s Caps. The Breakers and Caps finished 1-2 in the regular-season standings, earning them first-round byes and rather lengthy breaks; the semifinals aren’t set to get underway until March 6.
