Photo by Joe Lovell Members of the Wheeling Nailers congratulate each other after they eliminated the Indy Fuel from the ECHL Kelly Cup playoffs last Saturday in Cranberry, Pa., at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex, 4-2. Wheeling now meets Toledo for the Central Division championship in a best-of-7 series that begins Friday in Toledo.

TOLEDO — It’s on to Round Two of the ECHL Kelly Cup Playoffs for the Wheeling Nailers after they eliminated the Indy Fuel last Saturday. Now the Nailers will go fishing in search of Walleye, as in the Central Division’s top-seeded Toledo Walleye.

The division rivals only met four times this season. They will begin their best-of-7 series Friday night in the 8,000-seat Huntington Center in the Glass City. Game 2 will also be in Toledo on Saturday, with the next three — Games 3, 4 and, if necessary, 5 — set for WesBanco Arena in downtown Wheeling on Wednesday, May 8, Friday, May 10 and Saturday, 11. Games 6 and 7, if necessary, will be back in northwest Ohio on Monday, May 13 and Tuesday, May 14.

“We only played four times against them, the fifth game was canceled by the rain and flooding a couple weeks ago,” Wheeling head coach Derek Army said. “We know them a little bit and I know them a lot from playing them over the years. It is a different Toledo team that I’ve seen in the past.”

Although the teams aren’t familiar with each other this season, they do have a storied past. This will be the seventh postseason clash between the Thunderbirds/Nailers and Storm/Walleye, with Toledo prevailing in six of those, including two since the Walleye re-entered the league after two years off. The only year the Nailers won came in 1998 in the second round when current New York Rangers head coach Peter Laviolette was behind their bench.

“Both teams are completely different from when we played them earlier this season … their personnel and our personnel,” Army pointed out. “Obviously they are playing with a lot of confidence, but so are we.”

Army has a difficult decision to make for Game 1 as far as the Nailers goaltending is concerned. Taylor Gauthier, the ECHL Goaltender of the Year after finishing in the top five in six different statistical categories, has been re-assigned to Wheeling from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and will join Jaxon Castor as the net-minding duo. However, Gauthier is battling an injury that has kept him out of action since mid-March.

“Gauthier back. It’s a difficult decision, but a great thing to have,” Army stressed. “It will be exciting to see them in the series.”

Castor has shined down the stretch of the regular season and then in the five-game series against the Indy Fuel. He went 8-1-1 in his last 10 games

“Jaxon has played great for us, but Goat has played great for us all season,” Army noted. “It’s always good to have great goaltending.”

Wheeling has also added goalie Garret Sparks who led the Toronto Marlies to the AHL Calder Cup title in 2018.

As for Toledo, Army said it will be a tough task, but one his team is looking forward to.

“They play a really good style. They play an offensive style, but at the same time, they play hard,” he said of the Walleye. “I don’t think they are as big and physical as Indy was. Indy just kind of tried to run us out of the building. Toledo is a good hockey team. There’s a reason why they have won 52 games.”

The Walleye swept No. 4 Kalamazoo in four games in their Central Division semifinal series, outsourcing the K-Wings 18-8.

“I think we are really confident, especially the way we ended the regular season having to win a, basically, playoff series to get into the playoffs and then winning the first round the way we did,” Army said. “I think the guys are full of confidence in the way we are playing as a team.”

Wheeling took down Indy in five games, winning the final four after losing the opener inside the Indiana Farmers Coliseum, and giving them some time off.

“The rest definitely helped us. It was huge,” Army added. “A couple of years ago when we played in Toledo we kind of limped in there after a heavy Fort Wayne series. We had some call ups and injuries. We were a young team that wasn’t ready to match a physical Toledo team, and we were gassed.”

Although he said it would be nice to ‘steal’ a game in Toledo, Army is just looking at Game 1.

“It’s just one of those things that you take game-by-game. Sure it would be nice to go in there and win one of those first two games, but we’re focused on playing our best in Game 1 and go from there.”