The home side opened the scoring early in the first by capitalizing on some chaos in front of the Providence net, as Tobias Bjornfot corralled the loose puck out front and buried it through a mass of bodies.
On the other side of the ice, Charlotte stymied the Bruins attack from start to finish, eventually holding them to a historically staggering eight shots on goal.
The Checkers continued to pad their lead, with Wilmer Skoog firing a shot past Providence netminder Brandon Bussi for the second period’s lone goal and Oliver Okuliar finishing off an odd-man rush to build Charlotte a 3-0 lead early in the final frame.
The Bruins would finally break through shortly after Okuliar’s tally, then take advantage of a power play inside the final five minutes to narrow Charlotte’s lead to one goal, but the Checkers locked things down from there. Bjornfot gave his side some insurance with a long-distance empty netter and Will Lockwood added one more in the waning moments to lock in Charlotte’s 3-2 series win.
SKOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG pic.twitter.com/n8ZulsCZ8F
— Charlotte Checkers (@CheckersHockey) May 11, 2025
QUOTES
Coach Geordie Kinnear on the gameIn the playoffs, there’s no set path. We win two in Providence, you would have been happy with one, and then you come back and lose two at home. Now you come to, I call it a Game 7 because that’s pretty much what it is, and you put up a performance like that. I think you have to give the guys that have been down the road before and won a lot of credit, and that’s our leadership group. They took over today and it was a great game by everybody.
Kinnear on limiting Providence’s offense
We’ve done it all year to be honest, but you look at putting Vilmanis in, Dennis Cesana hasn’t played, but when you’re the type of group that we are where we went through all the injuries you’re going to need everybody, and it’s really no different. I felt very confident putting those guys in, and to give up only (eight) shots, they had two or three chances probably, is a great effort defensively. Obviously you have an experienced goalie back there with Kaapo, it settles everything down.
Kinnear on bouncing back from two straight losses and holding on to win this game
You need great leadership and a core group. Those guys took over the room, and that’s what you need to be able to win in the end. You learn lessons along the way, so we want to make sure we don’t forget about this series because we have some things we didn’t like. We kind of made it interesting at the end, and it’s obviously an elite hockey team over there. You look at some of their personnel, they have a lot of guys down from the NHL. Credit to Providence, because it's not easy being down 0-2 coming in to someone else’s building. It made for a great game and a major building block for our group.
Kinnear on keeping the season going
It's funny – you through different years, and I definitely wasn’t ready for the one to end. They’ve been a joy all year, so I feel fresh and I think they do too. We just want to keep going because we enjoy each other every single day. Another week of practice and being together is huge, but we have a lot to learn and we’re not done yet.
