By Thomas Pope 
Sports editor of the Fayetteville Observer

Fayetteville hasn’t played Pensacola, its first-round playoff foe, since back-to-back weekends in mid-January.

Fayetteville won the season series 4-2-0, winning three of four in Florida and splitting the lone twinbill at the Crown Coliseum. The FireAntz put at least five goals on the board in three of those wins against the defending champions of the Southern Professional Hockey League.

None of that matters come Tuesday at 7 p.m., when the FireAntz will host Game 1 of the best-of-3 series. The second game will be played in Pensacola on Thursday at 8:05 Eastern, and a Game 3, if necessary, would be here at the Crown on Sunday at 6 o’clock.

“Tuesday, everybody starts at zero,” FireAntz coach Jeff Bes said, “and we’ve got to be ready to go.”

On Saturday night, the Antz clinched the No. 2 seed for the playoffs with a 4-3 home win against Huntsville that saw the largest home crowd of the season, 5,226. Fayetteville finished the regular season with a 36-17-3 record and earned 75 points, as did Peoria. Fayetteville won the tiebreaker by virtue of having 36 victories to 32 by Peoria, which lost 11 times in overtime or shootout. 

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