The Victoria Cougars and Campbell River Storm are the Fred and Ginger, the peanut butter and jam, of the Vancouver Island Junior Hockey League playoff final.
They will face each other in the best-of-seven Brent Patterson Trophy league final for the fourth time in five years.
The Storm — the 2015, 2017 and 2018 league playoff champion — is making its fifth straight trip to the VIJHL final. Campbell River and the Cougars met in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
There was a brief hiatus from the rivalry as the Storm defeated the Saanich Braves, making their first finals appearance since 1996, in seven games last year.
But it’s back to familiar form this year with the Storm facing the Cougars. The 2019 VIJHL final begins Tuesday night at Rod Brind’Amour Arena in Campbell River at 7:30.
The second game goes Thursday at 7 p.m. at Archie Browning Sports Centre in Esquimalt. The third game is Friday night in Campbell River and fourth game is a 3:30 p.m. Sunday matinée at Archie Browning.
The top-seed Storm (34-10-4 in the regular season) outlasted the eighth-seed Peninsula Panthers in a seven-game first round series. Campbell River finished a whopping 54 points ahead of the Panthers (14-25-9) in the standings to win the Andy Hebenton Trophy as regular-season champions, but the surprising Panthers came within a game of pulling off one of the greatest upsets in VIJHL history. That certainly would have added to the lore of a league that has produced the likes of NHLers Jamie and Jordie Benn, Matt Irwin, Adam Cracknell, Ryan O’Byrne and numerous eventual WHL/BCHL juniors, NCAA collegians and AHL/ECHL pros.
But the Storm survived and then swept their 2018 finals dance partner, the fifth-seed Braves (21-17-10), in four games in the semifinals.
The second-seed Cougars (28-12-8) dispatched the seventh-seed Oceanside Generals (18-25-5) in five games in the first round of the playoffs before besting the third-seed Nanaimo Buccaneers (26-18-4) in a competitive six-game semifinal series.
The VIJHL champion annually advances to the Fred Cyclone Taylor Cup provincial Junior B championship tournament. Because the 2019 Cyclone Taylor Cup tournament will be at Rod Brind’Amour Arena from April 11-14, the Storm already have a berth as host team. So the Storm and Cougars are both guaranteed to advance to the Cyclone Taylor Cup regardless of who wins the VIJHL final.
