WINNIPEG – It may not have been their prettiest win of the season but the UBC Thunderbirds held on for a 3-1 victory over the Manitoba Bisons Friday night in Winnipeg to start 2024 in the right column, extending their win streak to four games.
Staking out an early 2-0 lead, the 'Birds' terrific start gave way to a purposeful pushback from the host Bisons in the final two periods.
Cole Schwebius was superb in goal making 24 saves for his eighth win of the season while UBC head coach
Sven Butenschon earned his 100
th career victory as T-Birds bench boss in the process.
"Cole was outstanding. Even though we didn't have our game in the first and the second, we still defended really well and stayed on the right side of the puck and played the game the right way," said Butenschon following his milestone win. "But in the third period they just elevated their game a little bit and then we were hanging on and that's where Cole really shined and made some huge saves for us and gave us some confidence and it was just great to see."
Before the game was barely five minutes in, the T-Birds (15-4) had already staked out a 2-0 lead as UBC capitalized on a pair of Manitoba (2-14-1) turnovers. After the Bisons coughed up the puck in the T-Bird zone,
Jake Kryski transitioned quickly back up ice on a 2-on-1 with
Matthew Smith. Kryski held the puck and sniped his fourth of the season, high, glove side past Kolby Thornton.
Less than two minutes later at the 5:12 mark, T-Birds captain
Chris Douglas doubled the early lead with his tenth, popping home a rebound off a
Scott Atkinson sharp angle shot.
The T-Birds opened the second period on the power play, a continued opportunity from late in the opening frame after Manitoba was called for too many men. Thornton denied several scoring chances including a couple blasts from
Jake Lee and just moments after completing the kill, a UBC neutral zone turnover led to the Bisons getting on the board. Jonny Hooker threw the puck across the low slot to Tony Apetagon who got just enough to slide it past Schwebius' left pad.
With UBC still up 2-1 with just four minutes remaining in the third, Kryski was sprung on a breakaway with a bid for his second of the game – and a key insurance goal – but was thwarted by Thornton who stopped the fourth year T-Bird, keeping it a one-goal game.
The Bisons put Thornton on the bench with two and a half minutes to play in an effort to find the equalizer with the extra attacker. But it was
Tian Rask who hit the empty net to secure the UBC win with his seventh of the season, just inside the final minute after Douglas impressively won a race to avoid an icing call.
"You're never really sure what it's going to look like after being off for so long," added Butenschon after his team's first game in six weeks. "You do the best you can in preparing physically and mentally with video and meetings. It was kind of weird because the first period we came out really sharp and crispy. We were organized, our execution was bang on. And then it just seemed like as we got a little bit tired then the timing and our brains just weren't making the right decisions a lot of the time and it allowed the game to be a lot closer than it should have been."
Butenschon's 100
th career win puts him in rare UBC company with only former coaches Dr. Bob Hindmarch and Milan Dragicevic managing the feat.
"I guess it just shows if you stay in one place long enough you can accumulate those milestones. It's been a great bunch of years here, so much fun, so much fun working with these guys, so much fun building. You just continue to build a program that can compete with the top schools in U SPORTS, so it feels good. It's kind of ironic it happened in Manitoba, my home province, so that's pretty cool."
Butenschon will go for win 101 in Saturday's rematch, the final regular season meeting between the 'Birds and Bisons with UBC able to complete the season series sweep. Puck drop at Wayne Fleming Arena is set for 12:00 p.m. PT with the game available live on
Canada West TV.
