Kyle Crnkovic and Jared Davidson each had a goal and two assists for the Seattle Thunderbirds in Wednesday’s 6-1 win over the Kamloops Blazers to reach the Memorial Cup semifinals.
Lucas Ciona, Jordan Gustafson, Luke Prokop and Colton Dach also scored for Western Hockey League champions T-Birds.
Seattle starter Thomas Milic made 30 saves to win.
Ryan Hofer scored the only goal for the Blazers as Dylan Ernst saved 36 of 42 shots.
The winner of Thursday’s tiebreak between the Blazers and the Peterborough Petes of the Ontario Hockey League will face Seattle in Friday’s semi-finals.
Peterborough — after opening the tournament with two straight losses — avoided elimination with Tuesday’s 4-2 win over Quebec Remparts.
Quebec Remparts (2-1) said goodbye to Sunday’s final after beating both Seattle and Kamloops.
Ciona opened the scoring for the Thunderbirds 4:02 in the first half.
The captain sent a lead pass from just inside the green line to a long-running Davidson, who made a backhand but was stopped but lost control by Ernst.
After a scramble up front, Ciona sniped the ball home for second place in the tournament.
A costly mistake in Seattle resulted in the Kamloops drawing even at 10:50.
Kevin Korchinski missed a pass and lost the ball to Daylan Kuefler as he was about to leave his area.
Kuefler quickly gave it to Hofer, who overcame Milic from the right-hand round to take second place to the cheers of the home crowd at Sandman Center.
But Davidson gave the Thunderbirds the lead with a power marker at 6:39 of the second inning.
The Blazers’ defense was negligent when Dylan Guenther noticed that Davidson had opened up with a stretch pass. Davidson drove up and shot the ball past Ernst from the head-to-head ring on the left.
Just eight seconds later, the Thunderbirds capitalized on another Blazers’ blunder.
Kamloops defender Aapo Sarell passed the ball into the net to Crnkovic, who passed Gustafson in front of the net to beat Ernst to give Seattle a 3-1 lead.
Seattle overcame the Blazers 29-19 in two heated periods with numerous skirmishes between Western Hockey League rivals.
Crnkovic took the lead over the Thunderbirds at 5:33 of the third inning.
He scored his team’s fourth leading goal in the tournament with a point shot that beat Ernst on the glove.
Prokop made it 5-1 just over a minute later. He scored from a slot on the pass Brad Lambert gave Guenther.
Dach scored with 5:32 remaining when he received Reid Schaefer’s cross from the right-hand circle, plunging around Ernst and scoring.
Have we met yet?
The Thunderbirds and Blazers split their regular-season four-game streak and finished first and second in the Western Conference rankings. The two met in the Western Conference championship series, with Seattle winning 4-2 in the best of seven games.
The Thunderbirds also eliminated Kamloops in the 2022 grand finals after seven games.
“It’s a great little rivalry that’s grown over the past few years,” Seattle head coach Matt O’Dette said after Wednesday’s practice. “They’re a great team, you know, I think they don’t get enough respect.
“We’re expecting a tough game, you know, we’ve had very tough games against these guys.”
