Vancouver – The Saskatchewan Huskies continued their hot play as of late as they defeated the UBC Thunderbirds men's hockey team by a score of 3-1 on Friday night extending their winning streak to five games. Craig McCallum and Matthew Spafford both had multi-point games for the Huskies while
Geordie Wudrick had the lone goal for the Thunderbirds as Saskatchewan clinched third place in the Canada West.
"We did a lot of good things tonight offensively but we couldn't execute," said head coach Milan Dragicevic following the game. "We'll take away the positives from this game since we battled for the entire 60 minutes, created traffic out front and put pucks on net."
Defenceman Kendall McFaull got the Huskies on the board with his third of the year early in the first after a shot from the point found its way through traffic fooling
Matt Hewitt. Spafford and McCallum were credited with the helpers on the play.
The Thunderbirds would make no mistake on the team's first power play opportunity of the game as Wudrick converted on a play down low that saw him open in front of the net.
Ben Schmidt and
Brad Hoban helped set up the play on Wudrick's equalizer, his second in as many games and sixth point in his past five games since joining the Thunderbirds in early January.
UBC was outshot 13-8 in the second frame as Hewitt kept the Huskies offense at bay before Connor Cox put away the go-ahead goal with five minutes remaining in the frame. Cox outwaited Hewitt at the side of the net and put one top shelf after the goaltender was unable to corral the rebound off an initial shot from Spafford, who collected his second assist of the night.
Luke Lockhart was the most effective Thunderbird in the second but was denied by Holfeld on a pair of partial breaks after Lockhart split the Saskatchewan defence.
With a 2-1 deficit entering the third period, the Thunderbirds would concede its third goal of the game after a defensive lapse opened the door for McCallum to bury one from a sharp angle. The unassisted tally gave the Huskies a two-goal cushion with just under 13 minutes remaining.
Huskies goaltender Ryan Holfeld would get some help a few minutes later as a pair of Thunderbird shots rang off the iron as the home team had their backs against the wall with half a period remaining. Despite pulling their goalie with two minutes to play, the UBC Thunderbirds were unable to put anything past Holfeld dropping Friday night's affair by a 3-1 margin.
"I told them after the game we need to give ourselves a chance to make the playoffs and that's the biggest thing right now," said Dragicevic. "We want to play meaningful games, not meaningless games."
Hewitt got the start in goal for the Thunderbirds for just the third time since mid-November and made 24 saves Friday night. At the other end, Holfeld was between the pipes for the Huskies making his 24th start on the season stopping all but one in a 26-save victory in game one of the weekend series. With the win, Holfeld has been the victor of eight of the Huskies goalie's previous 10 starts.
Saskatchewan improves to 14-9-1 and have third place in the Canada West locked up currently with 31 points on the season. UBC falls to 9-14-2 sitting four points back of Manitoba, Mount Royal and Regina, all tied for fourth with 24 points. With three games remaining on the schedule, the Thunderbirds need a bit of help from their division rivals to sneak into the playoff picture.
The two teams clash again tomorrow evening at 7:00 pm at the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre in what will be the Thunderbirds final home game of the regular season.
