Ams Win 3rd Straight U.S. Division Title...Thanks To Spokane?!?!

Share

By Keith Leventhal

Story Published: Mar 15, 2010 at 8:05 PM PST

For the first 5 months of the regular season, the Tri-City Americans dominated the U.S. Division and the Western Conference.

But, over the last few weeks, the Ams have been slipping, while a couple other teams got hot.

And that set up a couple of playoff races that weren't decided until the last day of the season.

On Saturday night, the Americans were in position to clinch the division and conference titles if they could beat the hated Spokane Chiefs.

But, they couldn't do it as the Chiefs won 5-4.

So, that meant it all came down to a game between Spokane and Everett.

The Ams were actually rooting for the Chiefs...and they ended up beating the Silvertips 3-2.

That win gave Tri-City their 3rd straight division title and 2nd conference title in the last 3 years.

And the team says the weekend was an emotional roller coaster.

Americans head coach Jim Hiller says, "Saturday night here we had a chance, game 72, I know everybody was excited about that, it almost felt like it took game 73 for us this year, sitting around and watching and listening to it on Sunday evening, so, in the end, you know, the points at the beginning of the year are just as important as the points at the back end of the year, it's a good thing we played as well as we did early and that proved to be the difference for us."

So, the Ams have home-ice advantage through the first 3 rounds of the playoffs.

In the first round, they'll be playing 8th seeded Chilliwack.

The Bruins actually won 3 of the 4 games they played against the Ams this year.

The first two games of this series are on Friday and Saturday at the Toyota Center.

Then, they head up to Chilliwack for 2 games.

Game 5, if needed, will be on Friday the 26th.

And if it goes all the way to a 7th game, that would be on Tuesday, March 30th at the Toyota Center.