For the first two periods at the Innisfail Arena it looked like the Eagles had watched the Canada ñ United States Olympic hockey semi-final game and took a decidedly defensive cue from the winning Canucks.
And while the Fort Saskatchewan Chiefs rebounded in the first half of the final frame to put serious pressure on Innisfail it was not enough as the Eagles hung on for a 4-1 victory before a big home crowd of about 625 fans to take a two games to one lead in the best of seven semi-final series.
For the first 40 minutes of the hockey game the Birds defense stifled Fort Saskatchewan, who were badly outshot and had serious trouble sustaining any offence. The Eagles, meanwhile, skated hard and had several scoring chances that kept Chiefs' goalie Jim Watt busy.
Wyatt Hamilton opened the scoring at 10:41 in the first frame on assists from Shawn Bates and Cristopher Neurauter. That was good enough to go into the first intermission with a 1-0 lead.
In the second period, Michael Kneeland made it 2-0 at 12:00 and after 40 minutes it appeared the Eagles would cruise to an easy victory.
But the Chiefs came out hard in the third period, finally opening up lanes and creating several scoring changes on Eagles' goalie Jonathan Larose.
And at 17:16 Adam Scott found a way to beat Larose and the Chiefs were within one of the Birds.
Fort Saskatchewan continued to press until just after halfway in the final frame but the Eagles ultimately found an extra gear, particularly when the Chiefs started to run into penalty trouble into what evolved into a chippy game.
At 6:01 Shawn Bates scored on the power play to make it 3-1 Innisfail. And then with less than a minute to play, Kneeland, who was selected the home team's star of the game, notched his second and the Eagles went on to earn a well deserved 4-1 win.
The Birds outshot the Chiefs 47-20 in the game. The two teams are back at it tonight (Feb. 22) in Fort Saskatchewan for game 4.
