Huskies eliminate McGill

Say good-bye to the McGill Redmen.

The No. 2 seed surrendered a multiple-goal lead for the second straight day at the Cavendish University Cup, falling 4-2 to the No. 3 Saint Mary’s Huskies at Fort William Gardens on Friday afternoon. The loss eliminated the Redmen (0-2) from contention at the CIS men’s hockey championship, and set the stage for a do-or-die match-up on Saturday afternoon between the Huskies and Manitoba Bisons.

It’s the fourth time in five years the Redmen have made it this far, only to go home without a title. How it happened made it that much more difficult to take, said McGill’s interim coach Jim Webster, whose team was stymied by a crushing forecheck that put his players off their game and created a few too many chances for the Huskies offense.

“Clearly,” he said when asked if Saint Mary’s forecheck messed with their attack. “We were ahead so we were handling it, but it certainly makes you play faster and everything else,” Webster said. “They came at us. We were ahead, and I think the penalties killed us.”

It wasn’t so much that the Redmen were tangibly hurt by the shorthanded situations – they surrendered one goal in the six power plays they afforded Saint Mary’s. But they were momentum killers and not necessarily deserved ones, Webster complained.

“I sound like a crybaby I guess, but if you watched the two games, last night’s game and this game were two absolutely different brands of refereeing, and very difficult for our players to adjust to,” Webster said. “I think the difference in the refereeing tonight, what we could get away with I think hurt us more than anything.”

Saint Mary’s coach Trevor Stienburg, whose team will play Manitoba on Sunday afternoon for the Pool B berth in the tournament final, said using the body to snuff out the Redmen’s high-powered offence was always on the playbook. 

“There’s no question that our game plan was to forecheck, to take the body and just pressure them as much as we possibly could,” said SMU coach Trevor Stienburg. “I thought we did a real good job in the first 10 minutes. But I won’t lie to you. When it was 2-0 for them after we played so well I was a little concerned.”

SM forward Cody Thornton, who had five goals and 14 points in nine Atlantic University Sport playoff games and two against the Redmen netminder Hubert Morin, said the Huskies remembered all too well the five-goal meltdown against Western in Game 2 of last year’s University Cup that cost them a shot at a national crown.

Thornton said that experience actually helped them on Friday afternoon, after Maxime Langelier-Parent and Christopher Longpre-Poirier staked the Redmen to a two-goal lead 12 minutes into the contest against rookie Huskies goalie Neil Conway.

“We were down two goals, but we just kept battling back,” said Thornton, whose first marker at 13:38 of the first opened the scoring for the Huskies, a hardworking goal that saw the Woodstock, Ont. native slam his own rebound home behind McGill goalie Hubert Morin.
It was a five-minute spurt in the second that turned Saint Mary’s fortunes around.

Scott Brophy tied it up a 9:25 and 65 seconds later SMU had its first lead, courtesy of Thornton again.

They kept pressing though, not wanting a repeat performance from 2009.

“We didn’t want to sit on the lead. At the start of the third period we kind of start to get into a defensive lull, and we wanted to get out of that. That’s not our game and that’s not how we win games.”
Thornton said they plan a similar game plan for the Manitoba match-up, though he admitted the team went bowling on Thursday rather than watch the Bisons knock off McGill 5-4 in overtime.

“Last year we went to the Western –McGill game and we thought it wasn’t a good thing for us. It didn’t help us, so we elected not to go this year and concentrate on our game,” Thornton said.

Brophy agreed wholeheartedly.

“I’m sure we’re going to go over some clips of the game against McGill, just to kind of focus on special teams. But for the most part, like Cody said, we’re most concerned about our game now. If we play our game to our potential, we’re going to put ourselves in a real good position.”

The decisive game against the Bisons is scheduled for 2 p.m. on Saturday.

FIRST PERIOD
Scoring: 1. McGill Langelier-Parent 1 (Belzile) 7:49. 2. McGill, Longre-Poirier (Doucet) 12:12. 3. Saint Mary’s, Thornton 1 (Pridham) 13:38. Penalties: Wright MCG (roughing) 8:26, Vossen MCG (cross checking) 9:32, Verreault-Paul MCG (roughing) 14:58, Hawes SMU (goaltender interference) 17:06.  

SECOND PERIOD
Scoring: 4. Saint Mary’s, Brophy 1 (Hawes, O’Donnell) 9:25. 5. Saint Mary’s, Thornton 2 (Pridham) 10:35. 6. Saint Mary’s, Munden 1 (Hotham, Danton) 14:17. Penalties: Verreault-Paul MCG (slashing) 3:08, Turcotte MCG (hooking) 12:20, O’Keefe SMU (tripping) 15:26.

THIRD PERIOD
Scoring: No scoring. Penalties: Verreault-Paul MCG (misconduct) 5:15, Danton SMU (cross checking) 11:06, Hawes SMU (tripping) 16:33, Langelier-Parent MCG (slashing), Hotham SMU (cross checking) 18:11.

GAME DATA – SOG – Saint Mary’s 12-7-6-25, McGill 13-10-3-26; Power plays – (goals-chances): Saint Mary’s (1-6), McGill (0-5); Goaltenders – Saint Mary’s: Neil Conway, McGill: Jean-Christophe Blanchard; A: 2,686.