The final four is set. Little Caeasars, the winner of a double overtime thriller against the Chicago Young Americans took on The Chicago Mission.  The Mission came into the final four with an unblemished 4-0 record and Caesars was 3-0-1.  The bettors would say the Mission have a slight edge, but the first tournament of the season always brings surprises.  New kids, new teams, new coaches can sometimes spring eternal.

Little Caesars won 4-1, in an evenly played game advancing to the finals versus the Blades/Syracuse game.

The Syracuse Nationals come into the semifinals 3-0-1 with a quarterfinal win over Islanders Hockey 4-2.  The Blades enter “3-1″ with a quarterfinal win over Team Illinois 3-1.

The Blades won 7-2:

The Blades got down early with a defensive zone miscue, 1-0.  They bounced right back when Gunnar Thoreson scored on a great pass from Jonny Meiers…it was 1-1 after one, with a slight advantage to the Blades.

Mitchell Kohner continued his hot play scoring to make it 2-1.  And then the Nats got two quick penalties to put the Blades on a 5-3 powerplay.  First, Thoreson scored with a quick shot to give the Blades a 3-1 lead with assists coming from Carson Bantle and Joey Miller.  Then a minute later, Luke Kron padded his weekend stats with another power play goal to give the Blades a comfortable 4-1 lead…with an assist going to Zach Michaelis….end of 2, 4-1 Blades.

With no resurface, the Nats were going to need to regroup quickly in order to catch the Blades.  And, they did.  The scored early in the third when a Blades defenseman misplayed a puck on blue line and the Nats capitalized to make it a 4-2 game.

The Blades settled down after that and got the all important next goal.  Jonny Meiers, scored on one of the nicest individual goals of the weekend to give the Blades a comfortable 5-2 lead and essentially send the Nationals back to Syracuse. Late in the third, Kron continued to pile up the points scoring on a pretty pass from Joey Miller and Carson Bantle added a final tally to give the Blades an easy 7-2 win.

The Blades will face Little Caesars Sunday a 1:00 Central Time.
To see a somewhat cheesy Youth One video  from last Fall of Syracuse and NJ, to get an idea of the level of play this weekend and to see two of the Blades opponents..watch this.  It’s actually a pretty exciting game. A last second GTG and a shootout in a 3 minute capsule: