VANCOUVER – After a successful opening weekend sweep of the MacEwan Griffins in Edmonton, the T-Birds are back in B.C. and are ready to take on the Trinity Western Spartans on Friday, October 10th, and Saturday, October 11th.
They'll have to wait until Saturday afternoon for their home opener at Father David Bauer Arena, as on Friday night the blue and gold head to Langley to take on the Spartans on their home ice.
TWU pulled off a pair of impressive 3-2 victories over the Alberta Pandas last weekend, one in a shootout and one in overtime, to match UBC's 2-0 record to begin conference play. Those results put the two teams together atop the West Division, holding an early lead over the Pandas and Griffins in the four-team group.
"It's the second weekend of the year and you can already call it a battle for first place," remarked T-Birds' head coach
Graham Thomas. "We're focusing on us and our development as a group, but the reality is these points are massive and getting out to a good jump and a good start will potentially pay some dividends this season. They swept U of A, the defending Canada West champs, so they're going to be very good games."
Trinity Western defenceman Presleigh Giesbrecht notched three points in the first weekend of action, joining the reigning U SPORTS Player of the Year
Grace Elliott as the only players in the conference to do so.
Elliott scored the winning goal in both of the T-Birds' two wins over the Griffins, contributing the lone score of the first game before a shorthanded tally in the second that made it 2-0 at the time, in an eventual 3-1 victory. She also recorded the assist on
Annalise Wong's game-opening goal earlier that same day.
Both of UBC's netminders got a start, with
Elise Hugens recording her 22nd career Canada West shutout and tying Halle Oswald for second all-time in the conference's history last Friday. Second-year backstop
Mya Lucifora stepped in on Saturday and turned away 15 of the 16 shots she faced as she earned her ninth career win.
Despite getting all four points, Thomas knows that the process has only just begun in terms of the fine-tuning that will be required over the course of the season.
"We still have a lot of work to do just on refinement, details, scoring, all these kinds of things," he mused. "Executing, finishing, it was a bit of a struggle on the weekend at times. We had a lot of O-zone time, we did a lot of good things but we need to do a better of finishing and executing on some of our plays and chances that we had."
The T-Birds did get plenty of their new blood into the lineup to begin conference play, with four rookies –
Audrey Church,
Elle Lorenz,
Barunka Sibertova and
Presley Zinger – featuring in both games against MacEwan.
With puck drop in their home opener set for 3:00 p.m. (PT) on Saturday, the Thunderbirds aim to continue their trend of strong results in their local rivalry with the Spartans. The T-Birds took all six of their matchups last season, although they needed overtime to pull out the win in their last meeting – January's Winter Classic.
"We're no stranger to each other, we've created a good, healthy rivalry with them," added Thomas. "They're well-coached, they work really hard. They're hungry and structured. They're a veteran group as well and they have great goaltending.
"It's going to be a great series, a good challenge with them all year long. They're going to be close games and we're excited for the challenge. We can't take anybody lightly this year and definitely Trinity we need to make sure we're prepared and come in ready to bring our best."
