ROANOKE, Va. – The Roanoke Rail Yard Dawgs are right back where every team wants to be this time of year - in the President’s Cup Finals series. Now that they’ve dispatched the beast that was Peoria, their focus turns to a familiar opponent in Birmingham.
They’ve split four games with the Bulls in the regular season but Birmingham is playing well as of late. 4-2 in the playoffs, both losses in overtime, but the Dawgs ability to focus on what they do best, rather than the other team’s strengths, has been the catalyst through the playoffs, and the key to victory this season.
“I know we just have that sixty minutes mentality, we just keep going, we like our identity as a third period team,” Forward Mac Jansen said. “We’ve gotten out to some slow starts, but we changed that in game three of the last series, and yeah, we’re going to roll with that. Stick with our identity and play a 60-minute hockey game.”
“I think being physical is the biggest thing with these guys,” Forward Josh Nenadal said. “We know that playing them the four times this year. They’re a very fast-skilled group, quick decoy, they snap the puck north, but they don’t like getting hit and that’s the story with a lot of teams. So we’re going to be as physical as we can and play our style of hockey.”
Game one is Thursday at 7 p.m. Game two is Friday at 7 p.m., then the Dawgs will return to the Berglund Center on Monday.