Brooks Bandits ready for playoff series with Penticton Vees

The Bandits are coming off a sweep of the Sherwood Park Crusaders, after taking five games to finish off the West Kelowna Warriors in round one.

Goaltender Zach Zahara has played in net for all nine of the Bandits playoff contests so far.

He said the team has played sound defensively in front of him and hopes to see that momentum roll into this series.

“I know it’ll be a super competitive series. It’ll be the toughest series we’ve had so far,” Zahara said

“We just got to be ready for the challenge and, we just kind of got to put our best foot forward and take advantage of the opportunity,” he added.

“We’re preparing this entire week for the series, so each and every day of practice is huge and each video session is critical to the games on the weekend.”

While Zahara has helped the Bandits win eight of their nine playoff contests.

The offense has been clicking for the Bandits top forward line of Parker Lalonde, Nick Peluso and Luke Bibby who each have 13 points so far these playoffs.

Lalonde said they have a lot of chemistry together, it’s been a good playoff run, but they’re going to need a lot more.

The Bandits split the four regular season contests with the Vees with each team winning a pair.

Alternate Captain Parker Lalonde said each team has had a lopsided win against their opponent in the regular season.

“We blew them out once, they blew us out once. We had two one-goal games. We won one, they won one,” Lalonde said.

“It’s been a tight series, I think. For us, obviously we’re going to look at what they do and identify some key features that they have with their team,” he added.

“But at the end of the day, we know what kind of team we are and we’re going to take advantage of what we do well and make them kind of adjust to us and play our game.”

Lalonde said getting a win or two in Penticton is really important.

“They play really well in that building. I think that this is a matchup that fans have been waiting for for a long time is Bandits, Vees playoffs,” Lalonde said.

“I’d imagine they’re going to have lots of fans in their building. It’s going to be loud. They’re going to be on us all night,” he added.

“It’s not going to be an easy building to go win in, but we’re excited to be able to kind of play the villain role a little bit for two games and then get to come back home.”

The series starts with games Friday and Saturday in Penticton before the best-of-seven series shifts back to Brooks for games three and four Monday and Tuesday.

by Jesse Gill

Brooks Bandits ready for playoff series with Penticton Vees

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