VANCOUVER -
Brandon Campos led the charge late in the game, scoring two goals to give the UBC Thunderbirds a 3-2 win over the McGill Redmen at Father Bauer Arena.
The winning goal came with 1:21 left on the clock. Campos raced down the right wing 1-on-1, turned his man inside out, drove to the net and scored on the backhand.
Minutes earlier, it was Campos again on the doorstep in front of McGill goaltender, Hubert Morin.
Cam Brodie put the puck to the net from the point, Campos got his stick on it, and lifted it over Morin to tie the game.
“I like how we responded,” said UBC head coach, Milan Dragicevic. “We were down 2-1 late in the game and we scored two goals. That's the sign of a character team and I like that.”
The win tied the exhibition series with McGill at one win each. Dragicevic and his team take some positives from the non-conference weekend.
Ryan Kakoske added the T-Birds other goal, a highlight reel worthy effort of his own, as he worked a long range give and go with
Jeff Lynch from the blue line to blue line before splitting the McGill defence and beating Redmen starter Danny Mireault with a nice deke.
“I thought both nights we did good things,” said Dragicevic. “Last night we kept them to 30 shots and we had 39. Tonight we outshot them by quite a bit (45-24). They're the highest scoring team in Canada and we did a decent job of shutting them down.”
The Redmen were able to get on the board twice in Sunday's matinee, including once on the power play. A tic-tac-toe of one touch passing culminated with the puck on the stick of Marc-Andre Dorion in front, who beat UBC's Francois Thout from point blank to get McGill on the board.
The Thunderbird penalty kill was much improved, allowing just one goal on five power plays after surrendering three power plays goals in Saturday's 6-4 loss to McGill.
“The main focus coming into today's game was the PK,” said Dragicevic. “We killed some penalties early and allowed our guys to get some momentum and some confidence, and that was the biggest difference.”
The UBC power play continued to struggle, and is something Dragicevic plans to address moving forward.
“Our power play needs work,” commented Dragicevi. “We need to score at least one power play goal every game to be successful, and I'm confident we can do that."
The T-Birds return to conference play this weekend when they host the Regina Cougars at Father Bauer Arena for a pair of games on January 8 and 9. Puck drop is 7:30pm both nights.
