A tumultuous PIHA Gateway season will come to an exciting end on Sunday at Midwest Sport Hockey when the Midwest Tornados (30-2-0 regular season) host the Southside Snipers (18-12-2) in the best-of-three division championship series.  (Here's hoping for a tripleheader.)

The Tornados finished the regular season with the best record in all of PIHA, and won their first 15 home games.  Perhaps their most impressive regular-season doubleheader was a sweep of the Snipers at All-American on March 14.  But the Snipers are peaking.  Three weeks ago, they ended the Tornados' quest for a perfect home record in the final regular season game with a come-from-behind 4-2 victory.

Then the Snipers trekked north to Chicago last weekend, where they swept the second-seeded Untouchables in the PIHA Gateway semifinal, setting up a Southside-Midwest division championship for the second year in a row.

Southside brought just five skaters -- Tommy Bruce, Brad Brussatti, Adam Clarke, Zack Reis, and PJ Tallo -- but were able to sweep the Pete Messina-led Untouchables, who had lost just once in their previous 15 games (not including forfeits).

The Tornados, dominant all season long, backed into the division championship thanks to a St. Louis Cobras forfeit.  Midwest actually lost their most recent game, against the Snipers in the regular-season finale.  It was Midwest's second loss of the season. 

Suddenly, it looks like the hot team is not the Tornados, who posted the best record in all of PIHA during the regular season, but the Snipers, who have surged recently behind the trio of Bruce, Clarke, and Tallo.

Short Bench

The formula was right for the Snipers last weekend, but a five-skater rotation isn't going to hold up against the Weidman Whirlwind.  Southside will have one additional top-notch skater on Sunday: defenseman Chris Loness, who missed last weekend's trip because of prior obligations.

Loness is one of the few opposing D-men capable of slowing down the Midwest attack, which features a rotation three lines deep, led by the world-class trio of Travis Fudge, Kyle Gouge, and Brandon Barnette.

All hands should be on deck for Southside on Sunday.  Forwards Mike Flieger, Joe Altnether, JJ McAtee, and Robby Carroll, and defenseman Aaron Sanftner, are also expected to play.  Forward Jeremy Scott is questionable with an ankle injury.

College Spirit

The eyes of the roller hockey nation should be fixed on this game - it features seven collegiate All-Americans: three Tornados (Barnette, Gouge, and goalie James Cash) and four Snipers (Bruce, Clarke, Tallo, and goalie Dustin Brown); four from Lindenwood (Barnette, Brown, Bruce, Gouge), and three from UMSL (Cash, Clarke, Tallo).  Add the Tornados' Fudge, Michael Inouye, Ian Mueller, Nick Syrigos, and coach Ian Mackie (LU) and the Snipers' Scott (UMSL) to the mix, and this matchup has a whole lot of Lindenwood-UMSL flavor. 

Sunday marks four weeks since Lindenwood topped UMSL 6-3 in the collegiate national championship game in Colorado Springs, avenging UMSL's league championship victory back in March.

As far as face-to-face matchups go, Fudge-Clarke and Barnette-Tallo are two of the more entertaining ongoing individual showdowns that will take center stage on Sunday, just as they did during the split in the regular-season finale.

Cash and Brown received first- and second-team honors on both All-America teams (Independent Ranking Committee and NCRHA).  Cash was the consensus NCRHA MVG. 

It's not quite LU-UMSL, though - six of the seven skaters will be facing a college teammate in the opposition's net.

The Goalies

Each team has employed a platoon in net this season.  Dave Garland backstopped the Snipers' 4-2 win over the Tornados on April 19, which was Jake Menzel's first loss of the season.

Garland is the first goaltender to beat the Tornados at their Queeny Park home rink since St. Louis' Brian Coleman in Game 1 of last season's PIHA Gateway semifinal.  As usual, Garland will split the first two starts with Brown, and Menzel will split the first two starts with Cash.

One would expect that the All-Americans will probably go head-to-head in net if there is a Game 3.

See the previous entry for a statistical recap of the season series.