END OF THE ROAD

WENATCHEE, Wash. — Nick Nagel scored a pair of scores and Jack Nicoll notched his second straight game-winning goal Saturday, earning the Wenatchee Wild a day off and a trip to Fairbanks.

Saturday’s 6-3 victory over the Alaska Avalanche gave the Wild a 3-1 victory in their first-round West Division playoff series and eliminated the need to play a fifth game of the series on Easter Sunday.

“It was really a hard-fought series,” Wild coach Paul Baxter said.

And a series that ended too soon for Avs coach Dave Boitz.

“I thought if we could have won that third period we would have won the series,” Boitz said. “That would have put all the pressure right back on them. But give them credit, they played a teriffic third period.”

The Avs led 3-2 heading into the final period, but the Wild scored four goals in the third to close out the series.

Mitch Torrel gave the Wild the early lead with a goal att 4:24 of the first period, but Justin Giles answered for Alaska at 17:47 to send the teams into the first intermission knotted at 1-1.

Alaska scored a pair of power play goals to take the lead in the third period. Logan Rounds scored at 4:00 to make it 2-1, then Tyler Currier scored his final goal in an Avs uniform at 12:30 to put his team back in front after Nagel had tied it with the first of his two goals.

“I always score in bunches. It’s weird,” said Nagel, who had just six goals, but a pair of two-goal games, during the regular season.

Nagel struck again at 2:37 of the third period, tying the game at 3-3.

“We’re not looked to score, we’re looked to be solid defensively,” Nagel said of his line, which includes Jake Flynn and Cam Severson.

Mission accomplished, said their coach.

“The goals aside, that line was consistently good,” Baxter said. “That’s exactly what we needed from that line. We needed to be able to roll four lines.”

Nicoll scored four minutes later to put his team in front to stay.

“I got a pass from Corbin Brown, and we came in two-on-one,” Nicoll said. “Their ‘D’ went to Duncan (McKellar) so I just shot for his pad and it went in.”

Nicoll, who won a Midget AAA U18 title at Shattuck-St. Mary’s last season, is one of the few Wild players with tournament experience, and Baxter said that experience was evident in the Alaska series.

“Nicoll was good the whole series, offensively and defensively,” Baxter said. “You could tell the guys who’ve been there before.”

As for the rest of the team, Baxter expects they’ll learn quite a bit from their first taste of the playoffs.

“I think they’ll understand things a lot better going into the next series,” he said.

While the Wild are moving on, the season is over for the Avs, including a half-dozen players whose junior hockey careers are now over.

“(Jason) Cohen, (Tyler) Currier, (Sean) McNeely, (Nathaniel) Pellegrino, all those guys played great,” Boitz said. “I thought we played our (butts) off.”

Michael Voran scored on the power play at 17:43 to give the Wild a two-goal lead, and Corbin Brown tacked on an empty-net goal, with the teams skating five-on-five due to an Avs penalty, with with seven seconds left in the game.

The Wild open the West Division finals Friday at Fairbanks, and Game 2 of the series will be Saturday in Fairbanks.

The date and location of the third game of the series will depend on the outcome of the first two games. If either team has a 2-0 lead, the third game of the best-of-five series will be Thursday, April 23, at Town Toyota Center.

Corey Voegele is a sports reporter for the Wenatchee World in Wenatchee, Wash., and the beat writer for Wenatchee Wild hockey.