Ex-Rangers boss DeBoer is taking dead aim at a third Stanley Cup final

WATERLOO REGION — The moment isn’t lost on Peter DeBoer.

“It’s so hard to get to this point,” the Vegas Golden Knights coach said after his club beat the Colorado Avalanche, 6-3, on Thursday night to win their Western Division second round best-of-seven series in six games and punch their ticket to the National Hockey League’s semifinals.

“It’s hard to make the playoffs in this league. It’s hard to win a series. What these men here have accomplished is really unreal.”

The former Kitchener Rangers GM and head coach is off to his fifth final four since moving behind the bench in the NHL. He won with New Jersey in 2012 and San Jose in 2016 and lost twice, with San Jose in 2019 and last year with the Knights.

He joins a flock of familiar faces in the final four, starting with the Golden Knights where longtime friend Steve Spott stands by his side as an assistant coach. Spott teamed up with DeBoer in Kitchener, before taking over as general manager and head coach for five seasons.

The pair reunited on the bench in San Jose and then again in Vegas.

Kitchener defenceman Nic Hague is in his second season with the Golden Knights and has posted a goal and an assist in nine games.

Vegas faces the Montreal Canadiens in the semifinals beginning Monday. Hamilton native Ben Chiarot, who now lives in Waterloo, is a fixture on the blue line for the Habs while former Rangers rearguard Ben Shutron is a scout for the club. Montreal forward Tomas Tatar was once a Rangers import draft pick — by Spott no less — but was flipped to the Plymouth Whalers in a trade for Gabriel Landeskog before ever playing a game for the Blueshirts.

Waterloo’s Boris Katchouk hasn’t played a playoff game for Tampa Bay but is on the Lightning’s post-season roster as the defending Stanley Cup champions prepare to meet the New York Islanders in the semis for the second consecutive year.

The Isles have split the crease in the playoffs with youngster Ilya Sorokin playing five games and veteran Semyon Varlamov playing seven, which has made for a busy post-season for goalie coach Piero Greco, who worked in the same capacity for the

Kitchener Rangers from 2010 to ’12. Of note, Islanders defenceman Scott Mayfield was a sixth-round pick by the Rangers in 2010, but never played for the team.

“It still hasn’t sunk in,” said DeBoer, who guided the Rangers to two OHL titles and a Memorial Cup during his seven years at the Aud. “We beat a team that maybe has the best analytics in the last 10 years. A team that people were pretty much handing the Stanley Cup to pre-season, all season and for sure once the playoffs started. If anyone ever questioned our group, I think they answered the bell.”

Vegas trailed the Avalanche — the NHL’s top team in the regular season — 2-0 in the series before rallying to win four straight.

“I don’t think there was a person in the hockey world when we were down 2-0 that would predict that we would finish this off in six at home,” he said. “There was a lot more talk of us being swept and embarrassed and could we even win a game.”

DeBoer has never won a Stanley Cup, despite two attempts. Maybe this is the year Vegas hits the jackpot. “I think we’ve got a group with a lot of pride and they just blocked out the

noise and went to work and battled and scraped and scratched and found a way,” he said. BROWNIE BITES: The Canadian wrestling trials are heading to Waterloo’s RIM Park on March 9-12, 2023. The event will decide which grapplers become Canadian champs as well as who goes on to represent the country at the continental and world championships . ... The Kitchener Panthers have re-signed left-handed pitcher Adam Robertson

and righty David Bruinsma

for the upcoming season. Both players saw limited action as junior call-ups in 2019. Robertson graduated from Laurier and won two Ontario University Athletics titles with the Golden Hawks. Bruinsma is a student at the University of Guelph . ... Former Kitchener Rangers defenceman

Yannick Weber (2006-08) has signed a threeyear deal with the ZCS Lions in Switzerland’s National League. Weber played 499 NHL games for the Montreal Canadiens, Vancouver Canucks, Nashville Predators and Pittsburgh Penguins . ... Galt Collegiate Institute graduate Tajinder Lall has been invited to training camp for the Guelph Nighthawks of the Canadian Elite Basketball League. The sixfoot-six forward won four national hoops crowns at Carleton University and was the first overall pick in the last year’s CEBL U Sports draft. The Nighthawks season tips off on June 28.