After being swept two weekends ago and splitting games Oct. 24-25 on the coast, hopefully something will jolt the underachieving men’s hockeysaurs before they dig themselves into a crater too big to crawl out of.
Losing to the University of Alberta Golden Bears is acceptable, and somewhat expected. However to nearly drop two games to the lowly University of British Columbia Thunderbirds is something that should trigger the leaders of this team to promptly right this ship.
Fri., Oct. 24, the team escaped with a 3-2 win, after Jordan Walker received a gift off a misplayed puck by UBC netminder Robert Filc with less than two minutes remaining in the game. Bracken Kearns and Wes Reid were the other Dinos to find the back of the net giving their team enough offensive support for the win.
Backup goaltender Donald Choukalous saw his first CIS action, and played well to compensate for the suddenly sputtering Dinos’ attack.
Oh, how one day can change the outlook of a weekend.
Saturday’s tilt was another tight one, with the Dinos finding themselves on the losing end. Although they outshot their opponents for a second straight night, most of the shots fired were blanks. Whenever they got a quality chance, Filc was right on top of it. Kearns, who had a solid weekend offensively, and team scoring leader Ken McKay found ways to solve the suddenly solid Filc, however their contributions just weren’t enough.
UBC hung around until overtime, when a streaking Thunderbirds forward skated down the boards behind the net and banked the puck off an awkward-looking Choukalous for the game winner.
To help you understand just how dismal a team the T-Birds are, it has been almost a full year between wins for their starting goalie, who last recorded a victory on Nov. 1, 2002.
For a team which should be contending within the elite of the conference, this type of start can’t be seen as anywhere near acceptable. With the CIS’s eighth-ranked University of Manitoba Bisons rolling in for a pair on the weekend, there will be a lot of preparing to do if the Dinos are to have any chance of finishing the weekend with some points to begin their increasingly difficult climb up the Canada West standings.
The first game goes Friday at 7:00 p.m. at Father David Bauer Arena, with game two slated for the same time and place on Saturday.