Men’s hockey hands Western their first regulation loss

Coming off of two disappointing losses to Brock University and the University of Western Ontario, the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks (4-8-0) were looking to garner a win over the No. 4 Western Mustangs (9-1-2) at the Waterloo Memorial Recreational Complex on Nov. 19.

Despite an attempted comeback by Western to bring the game within one goal, the Hawks managed to hang on and come away with a much needed 5-4 win. It was Western’s first regulation loss of the season.

Saturday’s game saw Laurier kill off two penalties early before Tyler Stothers capitalized on the power-play just six seconds into it to put them in the lead.

A hit from behind by James Marsden with 3:30 left in the period left the Hawks down a goal as he received a game misconduct.

This didn’t faze the Hawks, where on the power-play in the second period, a beautiful cross-pass from Joseph Vanni to rookie Dustin Scott gave them a three-goal lead. Mitchell Good followed up later to extend the Golden Hawks lead by three.

Just 22 seconds into the third period, after Western banked one off the post, the action went the other way and Stothers notched his second of the game to make it a four goal lead. Zack Shepley was ejected for cross-checking and this gave Western the momentum they needed with three unanswered goals on the five minute power play by Keaton Turkiewicz in less than two minutes.

Turkiewicz had a chance to tie the game on a breakaway but goaltender Ryan Daniels stood strong to hold the lead. Daniels finished the game with a career high 55 saves.

“It was nice to get a win against those guys,” said Daniels. “After they kind of spanked us last game, it was nice to come back and shove one right back at them.”

He was humble about his performance saying, “That’s really my only job out there, to stop the puck,” also adding, “my defence probably saved me more times than I saved them. As far as performance goes, it was great but the most important thing is team effort.”

Laurier was out-shot 59-21 but finished with a perfect 3-for-3 on the power play.

Tyler Stothers netted two goals to tie for team leader, while Joseph Vanni gained three assists and Mitchell Good had one goal and one assist to take the top spot for points on the team.

“It let us know that we can beat anybody if we put our minds to it,” said head coach Greg Puhalski. “A break here and there; a bit of lady luck helps, and obviously Ryan Daniels [was the recipe for success].”

The Golden Hawks look to keep this momentum going into next weekend where they will visit the No. 8 Lakehead Thunderwolves in a double-header showdown on Friday and Saturday.