For more than a month, Scott Hillman has sounded like a broken record.
Sunday evening at the Intrust Bank Arena in Wichita, the Missouri Mavericks coach finally got to sing a new tune.
“For four or five weeks, I’ve been telling you, ‘Every game is the biggest game of the season.’ Well, today we won the biggest game and we’re officially in the playoffs,” Hillman said after Braden Walls scored two goals, Jeff MacDermid accounted for four points and Charlie Effinger turned in a masterful performance in the nets in a 5-2 victory over the Wichita Thunder. "We are in the playoffs, but listen to the locker room. Do you hear anything? No – because that was just our first goal. The boys are happy, but they know they don’t have that much to celebrate right now.
“We have other goals and we aren’t going to be satisfied until we make a deep run in the playoffs.”
Brent Thiessen, Mavericks president and general manager, made the trip to Wichita and said it’s likely the playoffs will begin with a play-in mini-series starting March 22.
Playoff tickets for one or possibly two home games at the Independence Events Center will go on sale at noon Tuesday at the Events Center box office.
“We believe the playoffs will begin with the best-of-three series in the home arena of the fourth-place team in the Northern Conference,” Thiessen said. “Right now, (31-23-7) Mississippi is in fourth place – but we have two more games and who knows what can happen?”
The 31-25-6 Mavericks improved to 10-0 this season against the Thunder and are a game out of fourth place with road games this week against the Allen Americans and Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs.
The Thunder proved they weren’t going to go quietly in their quest for their first win against the Mavericks as Paul Kelly scored just 1:06 into the first period.
“We came out flat,” said Toby Lafrance, who scored his third goal in the last two games in the third period, “because we were a little bit tired to start the game.
“We had two very tough, physical games this weekend at the Events Center against Odessa, and it took a period for us to get going today. But once we got a score, we got into the flow of the game and finally won that game that put us in the playoffs.”
