Game On Magazine - April 2017 GameOn-Apr2017-P001-144-ONLINE | Page 85

championship series last year.
Horanski dominated the first game of the
best-of-five series, a 5-3 victory at home on
Feb. 25. He had two goals and an assist to
lead his club to victory. However, the next
three games ended in 5-2, 3-1 and 3-2 loss-
es for the Fishermen and the series win for
the Juniors.
According to Horanski, the hard-fought se-
ries between the two arch-rivals could have
gone either way.
“We had a tough draw in Peguis and they
were really dialed-up to play us,” he says.
He really cares, and probably the best
thing I can say about him is that he wears it
on his sleeve. There’s no doubt that Milan
works his butt off and he’s out to play, and
that translates to pretty much everything
that he’s done
“The energy of the series, it wasn’t like a
first-round series, it was like a Final. It was
back and forth the whole way, and every
game was incredibly close. All the games
we lost, it was one bounce or one break that
changed the game.”
The final and deciding game on March 5,
was a real heartbreaker for the Fishermen.
The game was deadlocked at 2-2 when the
Juniors scored the winning goal with 57
seconds left.
“It was close. It was hard fought and a very
fast game, I thought,” said Poponick. “They
got the bounce. We didn’t.”
Horanski, who’s 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds,
finished sixth in the KJHL point race this
year and was a league all-star. One of the
KJHL’s elite goal scorers, he netted 46
goals in the regular season and three more
in the first-round series against Peguis.
“He’s got a real nose for the net,” said
Poponick. “Milan is one of the guys you
need on a squad who can go out there and
if you need a clutch goal or if there’s a little
section of the net that’s open, he’ll find it
and he’ll put the puck in there.”
In Horanski’s case, speed kills.
“I score a lot of my goals off the rush due
to my speed,” noted Horanski, adding that
experience is another key factor. “I find the
older you get, the more you kind of figure
out where to go on the ice and anticipate
where the goals are going to come and how
to get to the right spot.”
Poponick says Horanski always puts himself
in a good position to score, and his centre-
man this year, Drayton Mendrun, knows
how to find him. Mendrun was second on
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