(Carrot River Outback Thunder/Facebook)

By Ben Tompkins

Best-of-three

Thunder set for survivor series matchup with Quakers

Feb 22, 2025 | 4:04 PM

The Carrot River Outback Thunder will play Game 1 of their Survivor Series against the Quakers, tonight in Saskatoon.

After finishing fifth in the Bob Dybvig division during the regular season, that meant a best-of-three series against the fourth-place team for the Thunder.

Win, and you advance to the semi-final series against either the Saskatoon Westleys or the Saskatoon Royals, lose, and your season is over before the calendar even hits March.

“It seems early, but if we can get past this round, we feel pretty confident that we could go fairly deep. Coming down the stretch, we beat the second and the third-place teams, so if we get past this round, there’s no telling what we could do,” explained Carrot River Head Coach Steve Percy.

“We just gotta show up and be ready to go because if we should be able to get by them, I think we’ve seen some success, and it’s going to be an exciting series, but it won’t be easy, that’s for sure.”

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Carrot River is 1-3-1 against the Quakers this season, earning points in their last two meetings of the season.

Overall on the year, the Thunder had a 12-24-4 record, while Saskatoon was 18-17-5.

“We started out fairly strong, and then had a bit of a slide through the middle, but coming into the final stretch, we were playing pretty good hockey. Although we struggled a little bit with consistency through the middle, we’ve played some good hockey here right at the end of the season, so we’re pretty confident going into the playoffs,” added Percy.

“We struggled a couple of games early on against them, but the last couple of games we beat them once and lost in extra time, so I think it’s going to be a good matchup. We’re going into the series and we’re not the favourites, so we’ll try and use that to our advantage, and just be ready to go.”

Puck drop for Game 1 on Saturday is set for 8 p.m. in Saskatoon.

Meanwhile, Game 2 will be Sunday in Carrot River at 7:30 p.m., and if needed, Game 3 will go Wednesday, back in Saskatoon, at 8 p.m.

“I think we have to play good defensively, and we’re a team that needs to work hard for 60 minutes. Our success this year has come from hard work and being a physical team,” Percy concluded.

“Winning comes down to hard work. We have a pretty good mix of young players and a few old players, and we skate well. We’re a hard-working team that wants to work the puck down low, deep in the corners because that seems to be where our success comes from.”

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Ben.Tompkins@pattisonmedia.com

On X @BenTompkins_8