Cherry Cup Finals

For the third straight year the Cherry's Checkers are the Cherry Cup Champions.  They remain the only team on the Cherry Cup, hence the Cup was appropriately named.  The Cherry's Checkers have become the Montreal Canadians of the CFHL.  This year it wasn't very easy and once again the Checkers had to rely on some late game heroics and some luck.

Kopitar and Martinez squared off in the finals

Cherry's Checkers vs. The Enforcers (3-3)

The game was close through out the week.  The Checkers were in control of the goals, being in the lead all week while the Enforcers as predicted were in the lead in PIM the entire week.  Anze Kopitar "the Zombie" lead all players and earned Cherry Cup MVP honors scoring 4 goals, 1 assist and a +5.  Dion Phaneuf lead the Enforcers with 7 PIM, but that was his only contribution as he had no goals and no assists and a -1.  However Shea Weber had 6 PIM and was the Enforcers MVP tallying 2 goals, 2 assists and +2 to go along with his PIM.  

Shea Weber did what he could for the Enforcers

The Goalies is where this game would be won and lost...and for the Checkers case that didn't look good as they were really only playing with 1 goalie, Crawford, as Hiller had been benched by the Ducks.  Crawford managed only one win and got lit up on Friday for 4 goals and a bad SV%.  The Enforcers already had 3 wins between Khudobin and Bryzgalov and lead in SV%.  

Datsyuk's 2 assists looked like enough to win the Cup

On Sunday the Enforcers took a commanding lead 4-2 after getting 4 assists, 2 from Faulk and 2 from Datsyuk.  It really looked like it was over for the Checkers.  The Enforcers finally knocked off the 2 time champs.  I mean surely that is what was going to happen. The Checkers needed O'Reilly to notch 2 assists to tie the game and hope none of the other 5 Enforcers playing Sunday night wouldn't score any more assists.  You could almost hear the champagne corks popping in the Enforcers locker room...

But in the infamous words of Lee Corso; "Not so fast my friends!" Bryzgalov was having a bad day.  After 2 periods he gave up 5 goals...then one more in the Third. He completely blew up and cost the Enforcers the Cherry Cup!  The Checkers won the regular season series with the Enforcers thus any tie the Checkers win.  Completely unbelievable!  The Enforcers no longer lead in SV% and the game ended 3-3.

Bryzgalov after costing the Enforcers the Cup

Kopitar hoists up the Cherry Cup!

The interesting thing was that Bryzgalov was a waiver wire pick up just for this final series.  Had he not been picked up, the result might have been different...but then again, the Cherry Checkers seem to always find ways to win or just pure Fantasy Luck to pull off the impossible.  

The Cherry Checkers have threepeated.  They have done it with truly the same model every year.  They stick to the L.A. Kings players and other western conference players.  They dominated the regular season, although at the end they started to struggle slightly and almost didn't make it to the Finals.  Congratulations to the Cherry Checkers, this year's Cherry Cup Champions!  So now I wonder how many teams next year will be drafting L.A. Kings?

Owner of the Checkers Rick Cherry hoist
up his 3rd Cherry Cup in a Row!