Flin Flon finished up a season sweep of division rivals Nipawin Sunday afternoon, clipping the Hawks' wings in a 6-3 win.
The game would be the final stop on the Harmon Laser-Hume revenge tour against the Hawks - the goalie broke into the SJHL in 2022 with them before Nipawin traded him to Flin Flon shortly before last season. Since losing his first game back a week after the trade, Laser-Hume won nine straight games against the Hawks heading into Sunday - his last chance to show his old team what they gave up on.
Nipawin got the most chances in the first and the Bombers did themselves few favours, with both Laser-Hume and counterpart Damon Cunningham stopping all shots they faced. The game entered the second period scoreless and with the Bombers shorthanded, with Noah Houle hooking Nipawin's Chase Visser on a late breakaway to stop a possible scoring chance.
The Bombers wouldn't just kill off the penalty, but they would open the scoring soon after. Joey Lies looped in after a line change and got a bounce in the neutral zone, leading to him coming in all alone on Cunningham and scoring. Lies' third goal in the last four games made it 1-0 Flin Flon.
Nipawin came back a few minutes later, with Mark Lafleur pounding home a rebound in the slot, tying the game back up, but that wouldn't last either. This time, it would be captain Justin Lies joining his brother on the scoresheet with a powerplay goal after a slick spiderweb of passes that left Cunningham almost no chance. Justin's goal was his 40th of the season, becoming just the second SJHLer this season after Humboldt's Spencer Bell to hit that mark this year.
That lead got extended with a second powerplay goal, courtesy of Keefe Gruener, who got about as wide open as wide open can get and beat Cunningham cleanly from the slot. Late in the second, Flin Flon struck again, with Noah Houle getting a shot through traffic and the goalie that Cunningham may not have even seen, making it 4-1.
Both teams traded goals in the third, starting with Kylynn Olafson catching the puck at the side of the net and directing it past Cunningham to extend the Bomber lead to four. Nipawin got on the board courtesy of Artem Hrabovetskyi, who caught a bouncing puck near the Bomber net, knocked it down and fired it in past Laser-Hume - Bomber players urged the officials to call the goal a hand pass or said he closed his hand on the puck, but replay showed the Hawk knocked the puck down to his stick and shot it into the net.
Nipawin brought the game within two with a late powerplay goal, with Evan Forrest getting a shot in from the point through a mess of people, falling over and doing a snow angel on the ice after hitting the net. The end result of the game would be unchanged though - Flin Flon had dug a hole too deep for the Hawks to climb out of.
With a minute to go and Cunningham on the Nipawin bench, Justin Lies fired the puck out of the zone and hit the empty net from way downtown, scoring his second of the day to seal it. Some late shots came at the final whistle - a slewfoot by Lafleur on Anthony Bax and a pair of small dogpiles at the end - but Flin Flon will head home with two points and, as has happened so often this season, the Hawks will fly home hungry.
Make it 10 straight wins for Laser-Hume against his old squad - he saved 26 shots to do it, while Cunningham saved 40 shots on the day.
The Bombers have now won 11 straight games against the Hawks, dating back to the start of last season. In the last five years, Flin Flon has gone 21-4-0-0 against Nipawin.
Flin Flon now has 91 points on the season, becoming the first - and, with few games remaining, only - SJHL team to crack 90 this season. The Bombers have a 44-7-2-1 record and are two wins away from tying the team's all-time record for wins in a junior A season - 46 in 1956-57, the same year the team won the Memorial Cup. The win also ties the Bombers' modern win record for wins in a season - 44, set in 2000-01, the same year the Bombers hosted, and came one game away from winning, the RBC Cup national title tournament.
No games played Sunday had any impact on where the Bombers will finish in the standings - they locked up first place weeks ago - or who they will face in the first round of the playoffs. As the first seed, Flin Flon will play the eighth seed and are guaranteed home ice advantage in any playoff round they play this year.
As of Sunday, there were three teams the Bombers could play in their opening-round series - Weyburn, Estevan and Kindersley. The Klippers are sitting eighth with 53 points, while both Estevan and Weyburn are tied for sixth with 54.
Weyburn has three remaining games and Estevan and Kindersley both have two. Weyburn and Estevan will play each other twice to finish the season and the Red Wings will play a third game against last-place Notre Dame Tuesday - a win in that game and at least one point against the Bruins will guarantee the Red Wings won't play the Bombers in the first round, guaranteeing at least a tiebreaker would go Weyburn's way. Kindersley has two games remaining, each next weekend against the third-place Battlefords North Stars - two losses would guarantee them playing Flin Flon first.
The Bombers' regular season will end next weekend with a pair of games in Humboldt against the Broncos March 15-16.
