VANCOUVER – The No. 4-ranked Alberta Golden Bears completed the sweep of this weekend's Canada West men's hockey doubleheader against the No. 9 UBC Thunderbirds with an 8-5 victory Saturday night at the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre in Vancouver.
 
Joe Antilla (Madeira Park, B.C.), David Robinson (Vernon, B.C.), Luke Lockhart (Burnaby, B.C.), Neil Manning (Nanaimo, B.C.) and Manraj Hayer (Vancouver) were the UBC goal scorers.
 
Kruise Reddick scored twice and Brett Ferguson recorded four points, including a goal, for Alberta in the high-scoring affair. Stephane Legault, Jayden Hart, Jordan Hickmott, Jamie Crooks, and Riley Kieser also found the net for the Golden Bears.
 
"I don't think we played hard enough," said the forthright captain Manning. "Giving up eight goals is something you never want to do. We definitely weren't good enough today."
 
With the score tied 4-4, Alberta retook the lead at 12:24 of the second period and then reeled off another three goals in the third to seal the victory.
 
Hickmott put his team ahead 5-4 as he swept a cross-crease pass from Ferguson into a wide-open net. The scoring opportunity developed when Ferguson won the puck on the boards to the left of UBC goalie Eric Williams (Langley, B.C.). The Alberta forward skated from the boards towards the front of the net before finding Hickmott with the nice pass.
 
The Golden Bears then took control in the third, adding three more markers. Just over three minutes into the third, Hickmott fired a pass from the left faceoff circle across the ice, through two UBC defenders' sticks to Reddick inside the right circle. He made no mistake on the one-time slapshot for his sixth goal of the season to make it 6-4. Less than a minute later, Crooks got Alberta's seventh goal as he knocked the puck past Williams, kicking it to himself, past a T-Birds defenceman, in front of the UBC net after fanning on a shot. At 14:58, Kieser re-directed a point shot from Jordan Rowley for the eighth Golden Bears tally.
 
The red lights at the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre were lit often on Saturday night.
 
The teams went into the first intermission tied 1-1 as Antilla opened the scoring on the power play at 6:19 as he cut across the slot and fired a shot over the right shoulder of Alberta goalie Luke Siemens. It was UBC's only shot on goal in the period.
 
Alberta counted 14 shots in the first, and one goal at 16:03 on the power play. UBC took penalties at 14:02 and 14:06, but nearly killed off he two-man advantage. The first infraction had just expired when Legault was able to flick the puck over Williams' pads on a goalmouth scramble.
 
Then the teams combined for seven goals in the second period, six of which came in a span of 7:16. Hart scored 59 seconds into the second on the power play to put Alberta up 2-1.
 
Robinson responded for UBC at 2:47. He broke in on the left wing and fired a wicked wrist shot to the top right corner, over Siemens' glove and shoulder to even the score at 2-2.
 
Then just half a minute later, as the previous goal was still being announced, UBC struck again. Robinson backhanded a pass from the right boards across the ice to a charging Lockhart, who hit a rolling puck at the left circle past Siemens to give the Thunderbirds a 3-2 advantage. At this point, UBC had three shots on net, all of which were goals.
 
Alberta scored twice in 1:08 before Manning tied the game again at 8:15. With the man-advantage, the defenceman fired a slapshot through traffic that just hit the underside of the crossbar for his second goal of the year.

Hayer was given credit for UBC's final goal. He threw a cross-ice pass which Alberta defenceman Dylan Bredo knocked into his own net.
 
"They were the better team all night," said UBC head coach Adam Shell. "We were playing with fire all night and the longer you play with fire, eventually you're going to get burned."
 
With his four assists tonight, Austin Vetterl (Surrey, B.C.) is second in points for UBC behind Anthony Bardaro (Delta, B.C.). He has the most points of any rookie player in the Canada West in rookie scoring and is eighth in overall league scoring.
 
UBC (7-4-3) is fourth in the Canada West standings and will play its last games of 2015 next weekend in Calgary against the Dinos. Alberta (10-3-1), sitting second place in the league, will host Lethbridge next weekend.