Laurier hockey downs Brock

An explosive first period that featured Mitchell Good and Nathan Peacock scoring 32 seconds apart within the first two minutes of the game gave a boisterous Laurier crowd, heavily made up of Winter Carnival attendees, much to cheer for early on, as the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks’ men’s hockey team rode a strong first period to a 4-2 victory over the visiting Brock Badgers on Friday night.

“We came out really strong,” said game-winning goal-scorer Paul Bradley. “We had some great fan support so it was a good energy boost. We fed off their energy and we held our own.”

Brock forward Steve Pattison cut the lead to 2-1 at the start of the first period, but goals by Hawks’ scoring leader Bradley and third-year sniper Voakes extended the Laurier lead to 4-1 by the end of the period.

In the second period, Badger winger Adam Schwark cut the purple and gold lead in half, but that was as close as the Badgers would get.

Laurier goalie Jeff MacDougald was brilliant in the effort, making 29 saves on 31 shots, solidly shutting the door to a late Brock come back.
“Our goaltending was great tonight,” said Good. “We had a good all-around four lines going, you can’t ask for much more than that.”

“As the game went on our play began to get choppy,” continued Bradley. “But we held them off.”

With the victory, the Hawk’s climb one more spot in the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) rankings to number seven, with eight games left in the regular season.

Laurier’s next game is on Thursday when they host the Guelph Gryphons; on Sunday the number 10 nationally-ranked Lakehead Thunderwolves come to town.