The round three series between the Kamloops Blazers and Seattle Thunderbirds is truly a showdown between the conference’s two best teams.

Seattle finished first with 111 points and Kamloops was not far behind with 103, with the next best team in the west being the 88-point Portland Winterhawks.

Both teams have loaded up for Memorial Cup runs, with only the Blazers guaranteed a spot in the tournament as hosts, and are quite simply stacked.

It’s only right that they meet up in the Western Conference Final and the series is set to get underway in Seattle tonight.
 

Both teams have breezed through the first two rounds of the playoffs with a pair of sweeps, but one of those perfect records will fall in game one.

Game two will be played south of the border on Sunday before the series shifts back to Kamloops for games three and four next week.

The highly-anticipated showdown features no fewer than 19 NHL draft prospects, nine of whom were selected in the first two rounds of their respective NHL drafts.

Another eight players from the two rosters are listed on NHL Central Scouting’s 2023 draft rankings, including both number-one netminders in Thomas Milic and Dylan Ernst.

There are also a total of nine players from Canada’s gold medal-winning team at the 2023 World Juniors playing in this series.

That includes Milic, along with teammates Nolan Allen, Kevin Korchinski, Reid Schaefer, Colton Dach and Dylan Guenther, who scored the golden goal.

Logan Stankoven, Caedan Bankier and Olen Zellweger of the Blazers were all a part of that team as well, although Zellweger was still a member of the Everett Silvertips at the time.

Photo Credit: Keith Dwiggins

These two teams split their regular season series two games apiece, so it’s anyone's guess who will have the upper hand in the Western Conference Final.

If Seattle wins, they will need one more series win to join the Blazers in the Memorial Cup, but if Kamloops wins, the Thunderbirds’ season is over.

Here’s the full series schedule:

Game    Date    Away    Home    Time    
1    April 29, 2023    Kamloops    Seattle    6:05 p.m. PT    
2    April 30, 2023    Kamloops    Seattle    5:05 p.m. PT    
3    May 2, 2023    Seattle    Kamloops    7:00 p.m. PT    
4    May 4, 2023    Seattle    Kamloops    7:00 p.m. PT    
5    May 6, 2023    Kamloops    Seattle    6:05 p.m. PT    *
6    May 8, 2023    Seattle    Kamloops    7:00 p.m. PT    *
7    May 9, 2023    Kamloops    Seattle    7:05 p.m. PT    *
* – if necessary