EDMONTON – St. Croix scores twice, Brossoit earns shutout in 2-0 Game 7 win over Calgary Hitmen en route to the WHL championship rematch with Portland Winterhawks.

All the Edmonton Oil Kings needed to wrestle Game 7 of the Western Hockey League Eastern Conference final away from the Calgary Hitmen was a little tag-team effort.

Led by a pair of goals from Michael St. Croix and a shutout from Laurent Brossoit, the Oil Kings earned a gutsy 2-0 win over the Hitmen to claim the WHL Eastern Conference crown and, in the process, set up a rematch with the Portland Winterhawks in the WHL final, which gets underway Friday in the Rose City.

Edmonton’s win came just 48 hours after a disheartening 4-3 overtime loss to the Hitmen in Calgary, when the Oil Kings blew a two-goal third-period lead. That effort and in particular the lack of back checkers, St. Croix included, which led to Brooks Macek’s overtime winner, drew criticism from head coach Derek Laxdal.

St. Croix, however, more than made it up for that gaffe Tuesday en route to earning series MVP.

“The bottom line is we got the win as a team. Coming into Game 7 it really doesn’t matter (if you play well individually) if you don’t win, so we got the win and that’s the biggest part,” St. Croix said. “Any time a coach challenges the team, you definitely want to step up and be that guy, but with that being said I think we had a lot of guys step up.”

St. Croix’s first of the night 14:05 into the first period opened the scoring, and while the New York Rangers draft pick may have been the man in the goal column, it was the work of Stephane Legault that set the table.

The crafty 19-year-old set up the opener by lifting the stick of a would-be Calgary defender in front of the Edmonton bench, jump starting a two-on-one chance with St. Croix, who buried Legault’s cross-ice pass over the glove of Hitmen netminder Chris Driedger.

“The kids looked a little nervous the first 10 minutes. It’s a lot of pressure on them” Laxdal said. “Once we got that first goal I thought we kind of found our game, but it was one heck of a seventh game.”

The game’s first goal came amid an Edmonton onslaught. The Oil Kings finished off the frame with a 16-1 run on the shot clock to take an 18-8 lead in that department into the locker-room after the first.

Opening the second, Edmonton picked up right where they had left off, giving the Hitmen everything they could handle and more as St. Croix added another goal to all but erase, once and for all, the disappointment of Game 6.

“I thought (St. Croix) really jumped up. Obviously, the goals he scored were huge goals and the second one he jumped on a nice rebound and got it,” Laxdal said. “I thought he was dominant down low. I thought he was really strong on the puck and had some great cutbacks.”

The winger’s team-leading 10th of the post-season came just 4:33 into the period and was all the scoring in the frame, as Edmonton carried a two-goal cushion into the third — just as they had in Game 6.

But unlike that game, which saw the Oil Kings blow a 3-1 third-period lead, Edmonton didn’t let this series-clinching opportunity slip through their fingertips.

Backstopped by Brossoit’s fifth goose egg of the playoffs, the Oil Kings finally delivered the final blow in what had been a series full of endless twists and turns.

Brossoit, a Surrey, B.C., native, moved into sole possession of second place on the WHL single-season playoff shutout list behind only former Vancouver Giant Dustin Slade’s six.

Now with another conference banner to hang in the rafters of Rexall, Edmonton will set their sights on a second WHL title against a Portland team looking to avenge two consecutive losses in the league final.

“We’ve got our task cut out for us. Obviously they’re a 117-point team in the regular season, so that makes us the underdogs and we’ve got to go in there and play a strong team game and get read y for Game 1,” Laxdal said.

NOTES: Edmonton secured the win despite a zero-for-four effort on the power play. The Oil Kings went a combined 0-for-20 on the man advantage to end the series … 10,738 fans were in attendance, pushing the series total to just over 63,000 … Veteran forward Trevor Cheek was the latest Oil King to miss a game with an injury, sitting out his first game of the playoffs due to an injury initially sustained back in Game 5.