Defending champion Chugiak is back in the Cook Inlet Conference hockey championship game, where the Mustangs will face a team that has never played for a CIC title.
Eagle River will play in the championship game for the first time in school history Saturday when the Wolves meet the Mustangs at Ben Boeke Arena. At stake is the conference title and the CIC's top seed at next week's state tournament in Wasilla.
The teams gained spots in the championship with victories in Thursday's semifinal round. Fifth-seeded Eagle River stunned top-seeded South 4-2 at Ben Boeke Arena and second-seeded Chugiak swamped sixth-seeded Dimond 6-2 at the McDonald Center.
Saturday's showdown will mark the first time in more than two decades that the championship game will not include at least one of Anchorage's southside teams – South, Dimond or Service. The last time that happened, in 1995, Chugiak beat East 5-4 in overtime.
Chugiak didn't win another CIC title until last season, when it dropped Dimond 6-2 in the championship game.
The Mustangs won Thursday's rematch by the same score, thanks to three goals from John Hammer, two from Andrew Beckett and one from Zach Krajnik, who also supplied five assists.
Chugiak jumped to a 2-0 lead on goals by Hammer and Beckett, but 32 seconds after Beckett's goal Dimond's Sean Carey made it 2-1. Hammer's second goal of the period gave Chugiak a 3-1 lead at the first intermission.
The Mustangs led 5-1 after second-period goals from Beckett and Krajnik.
Dimond's Cody Dearing scored on the power play early in the third period, but Hammer completed his hat trick to restore Chugiak's four-goal lead.
Goaltender Jack Walters made 24 saves for the Mustangs. For Dimond, Ted Stevens stopped 20 shots in the first two periods before giving way to Blue Hildebrand, who made six saves in the third period.
The surprise of the night came at Ben Boeke, where Eagle River used two goals apiece from Joshua Linn and Ben Rinckey and 28 saves from goalie Ryan Gray to take down South.
The outcome was a surprise because South won the regular-season title with an 11-2-1 record and Eagle River finished fifth at 7-5-2.
But Eagle River gave the Wolverines trouble in both of their regular-season meetings, playing them to a 2-2 tie in November and losing a 6-5 overtime game in December.
On Thursday, Eagle River struck first with a goal by Rinckey less than a minute into the game. Asa Kinnear answered for South a couple of minutes later, but the Wolves took the lead for good on Linn's goal with four minutes left in the first period.
Rinckey got his second goal in the second period, and Linn scored an unassisted goal with six minutes left in the third period to give Eagle River a 4-1 lead.
Corbin Allen ended the scoring two minutes later with a goal for South, which got 20 saves from goalie Hannah Hogenson.
South and Dimond will face off in the third-place game Friday at 6:30 p.m. at Ben Boeke. The winner gets the CIC's No. 3 seed at state, and the loser will be the No. 4 seed at state.