HUNTSVILLE – The Huntsville Havoc swept their way past the Fayetteville Marksmen and into the second round of the Southern Professional Hockey League playoffs.
Now they’ll take a shot for a berth in the SPHL championship finals.
First, the business at hand is a President’s Cup Playoffs semifinal clash with the Roanoke Rail Yard Dawgs. Faceoff for Game 1 of the best-of-three series is 7:45 p.m. Wednesday at the Huntsville Ice Sports Center. The game is a sellout.
“I really liked our game against Fayetteville,” Havoc head coach Stuart Stefan said. “We really stuck to our systems. I think the second game’s score line was a bit misleading, it was a closer game than it looked.
“That being said, we knew going into that series that we needed to put our foot on the pedal from the start and our guys really did that.”
In the meantime, there was a winner for the Havoc – Cody Miller is a co-recipient of the 2023-2024 SPHL Athletic Trainer of the Year Award. He and Kyle Sherrill of the Marksmen were selected by a vote of the league’s equipment managers and athletic trainers.
In his first season with the Havoc, Miller has been a certified Athletic Trainer for 10 years and worked for the Birmingham Bulls from 2017-2023.
Miller, a native of Cullman, earned his B.S. in Exercise Science and Athletic Training from Troy University in 2015, and his master’s degree in Kinesiology and Exercise Science from Alabama A&M in 2017.
The Havoc-Rail Dawgs series will move to Roanoke’s Berglund Center for Game 2 at 6:05 p.m. Friday. If necessary, Game 3 will be Saturday at 6:05 p.m. in the Old Dominion State.
While the Havoc took its opener in two games, the Rail Yard Dawgs defeated Quad City in three.
Huntsville also hosted the opening game of the set with Fayetteville, taking a 3-1 decision last week at the Ice Sports Center. The Havoc then closed it out with a 7-2 romp in North Carolina.
Roanoke moved past the Storm after losing the first game 3-2 before winning the next two 3-2 and 7-1.
The Havoc won the regular season series with the Rail Yard Dawgs 4-3.
“We need more of the same (from the first round),” Stefan said. “Roanoke is a more systematic team and they play pretty similar to us. The biggest thing for us this series is just to keep that energy and emotion from the first round into the second round.”
The winner will play either Evansville or Peoria.
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