The Texas Tornado advanced to the second round of the South Division Semifinals after an 8-1 drubbing of the Topeka RoadRunners at Dr Pepper Arena on Friday. Scott Conway led the way with a hat trick for the Tornado, who also got goals from Alexey Solovyev, Jason Eddy, Justin Greenberg and Nick Blase.   Hunter Leisner made his third straight start of playoffs and stopped 31 of 32 shots. The Tornado will play Amarillo in the next round, wth dates of that series to be announced.

Conway’s first goal came in the first period after skating the puck from the halfboards into the slot. With all the time in the world, he let loose a wrist shot that beat Viele high and gave the Tornado a 1-0 lead. Later in the first, Conway passed the puck back to Solovyev, who inched in from the blue line before his shot snuck through traffic and beat Viele to make it a two-goal game.

The Tornado made it 3-0 on Conway’s second, after a middle period that went nearly the entire 20 minutes without seeing a goal. But a long pass from the Tornado zone hit Conway at the opposite blue line, allowing the 18-year-old forward to walk in on breakaway. He stickhandled to his forehand, got it past Viele, and gave the Tornado a 3-0 lead.  

The Tornado had their three-goal lead in the third period, but broke it wide open in the third with five more goals. First, it was Eddy, who skated into the zone with CJ Rueschlein on a 2-on-1. Reuschlein fed Eddy with the pass, and though he had his initial shot stopped, put home the tap-in rebound for a goal. A few minutes later, a laser of a wrist shot from Leef made it 5-0. Just 35 seconds, later, Juraj Kurcirko’s rebound goal gave Topeka its only goal of the night, though the Tornado were far from done.

Justin Greenberg stuffed a puck home for his first goal of the playoffs, which came 35 seconds after Kurcirko’s goal. Greenberg’s goal made it 6-1 game, and a power-play goal from Blase put the game even further out of reach. That’s when things almost turned ugly. With less thn a minute left, a vicious open-ice hit from Kevin Patterson sent Reuschlein to the ice, and a collection of Tornado players towards Patterson. Cooler heads prevailed, for the most part, and though there were some penalties assessed, the majority of them went to the team who was eliminated when the 56 seconds ticked off the clock.

The Tornado will faceoff against Amarillo in the next round of the South Division Semifinals, with the winner of that series to play for the Robertson Cup.