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By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor

The hottest team in the SPHL kept rolling into the playoffs as the Birmingham Bulls extended their win streak to 10 games in a row with a quarterfinal sweep of the Fayetteville Marksmen.

The Bulls took game one 4-2 on Thursday, April 10 at the Crown Coliseum in Fayetteville, N.C. before winning game two 3-2 on Saturday, April 12 at the Pelham Civic Complex and Ice Arena, sweeping the best-of-three series 2-0.

What’s more, the Knoxville Ice Bears’ upset of the No. 3 Roanoke Rail Yard Dawgs means Birmingham will once again have home-ice advantage in the semifinals.

Game one will be Wednesday, April 16 at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum before game two on Friday, April 18 at 7 p.m. in Pelham. If needed, game three will also be at home on Saturday, April 19 at 2 p.m.

The first game of the series saw neither team score in the first period while the Bulls got an 8-5 shots on goal advantage.

Birmingham carried over that momentum into the second period when the Ledziankou twins got the scoring going.

Just past the midway point in the game, Arkhip Ledziankou scored off assists from Carson Rose and Filimon Ledziankou, putting the Bulls up 1-0 with 9:03 remaining in the second period.

After assisting on the first goal, Filimon doubled up the lead with 2:46 remaining thanks to help from Andrew Bellant and Kyler Matthews.

However, throughout the second period, Fayetteville got more offense off and even tied Birmingham in the shots on goal column with 10 apiece. That increased output paved the way for Chance Gorman to score off an assist from Dalton Hunter with 1:11 remaining in the period.

The Bulls went into the third period up 2-1 and quickly got a chance to add to it. Just three minutes into the period, Kolten Olynek scored to make the lead 3-1, and a minute later, Arkhip Ledziankou added his second of the game off an assist from his brother Filimon.

That put Birmingham up 4-1 with 15:42 remaining. While Fayetteville scored with 14:08 remaining in the game off a John Moncovich goal, it couldn’t close the gap down the stretch with the Bulls getting the majority of the chances on goal, 11-8.

Birmingham held on until the end for a 4-2 game one win before coming back home to Pelham for a potential clinching game two.

While the first game was completely clean of penalties or fights, the second game was anything but.

After McGregor Sinclair’s opening goal with 11:26 remaining in the first, both teams traded penalties over the next two minutes to leave a 4-on-4 situation.

That’s when Arkhip Ledziankou scored to take the lead to 2-0 as goaltender Austin Lotz sent a pass to Filimon Ledziankou, who quickly found his brother for the goal with 8:14 remaining in the first.

However, a Bulls penalty for too many men on the ice with 7:43 remaining in the period put the hosts in trouble, and Ryan Nolan capitalized just 26 seconds into the power play with a goal to cut the deficit to 2-1.

Ryan Leith then tied up the game at 2-2 with 4:26 left in the first to keep the momentum rolling.

Fayetteville suffered a penalty shortly afterwards that put it on the back foot for the rest of the period. Nolan and Scahill then went to the box for fighting with 1:30 left, but they didn’t miss much as the teams remained tied at 2-2 going into the first intermission.

That was also the score after the second intermission as neither team scored in the second period. Despite that, the Bulls generated more momentum by outshooting the Marksmen 18-11 to add to their shots-on-goal advantage from the first period.

The momentum paid off early in the third period when Ben Higgins found Drake Glover for the go-ahead goal with 15:04 remaining in the game.

Birmingham wasn’t out of the woods yet though as it had to endure a series of penalty kills, including a brief stretch of 4-on-3 hockey after a Bellant interference call with 8:39 remaining.

While Fayetteville outshot the Bulls 18-5 in the third period, it couldn’t find the back of the net the rest of the game, and a Moncovich slashing call with 2:59 remaining effectively put away the series to help Birmingham win the game 3-2 and the series 2-0.

Lotz earned the First Star with 40 saves on 42 shots faced, Brierley got the Second Star by securing a plus-1 rating with two shots from the defenseman while Filimon Ledziankou’s first-period assist secured him the Third Star.