Brock’s men’s hockey team added to their commanding lead on the OUA this weekend with two wins against the Guelph Gryphons and the University of Toronto (UofT) Varsity Blues, making it seven in a row.
Guelph are squarely middle-of-the-pack, exiting the weekend with a 7-6 record through 13 games and only a +1 goal differential.
The Varsity Blues are now tied with Toronto Metropolitan (TMU) for second in Brock’s OUA West division, but TMU has two games in hand on UofT. Not that either team is particularly close to catching number one; the Badgers now sit eight points above second in their division.
The Badgers took on Guelph first, playing them at home on Friday, Nov. 17th.
The match got off to a slow start, but Brock was eventually able to secure the first lead of the game 14-and-a-half minutes in after outshooting Guelph 17-10. Jordan Stock was responsible for the first strike, his third of the season.
Though the Badgers went into the first intermission with this lead, Guelph came out of the intermission looking hungry to tie it.
12 minutes into the second, that’s exactly what Guelph did. Having owned the shot pressure for the early parts of the period, the Gryphons scored their first goal of the match and added another five minutes later to hand them their first and only lead of the match.
Tyler Burnie evened the score exactly two minutes after the Guelph goal before Zach Taylor reclaimed the Badgers’ lead 33 seconds after that.
Now back in the driver’s seat, the third period belonged to Jacob Roach.
Brock’s leading goal-scorer, Roach found his groove early in the final frame, scoring first seven minutes in. Though the Gryphons brought the lead back down to one with a goal a minute after, Roach scored a second with six minutes left, and added an empty-netter to secure the Badgers win and his second hattrick of the season. Burnie led the Badgers in points with a goal and three assists.
The next evening on Nov. 18th, the Badgers traveled to Toronto to take on UofT.
The Badgers pressured hard in the early going, forcing neutral-zone turnovers and keeping the puck below UofT’s goal line. They were quickly rewarded for their workmanlike play with a goal when, off an offensive zone faceoff, Zach Taylor tee’d-up Riley Gannon for a left-point blast four minutes in.
Despite not scoring again for much of the period, the Badgers continued to dominate, outshooting Toronto 12-2 and visibly out-possessing them. Eventually they did stretch their lead when Cale Sanders crashed the net on the forecheck, but the two-goal lead was short-lived.
Shortly after Brock failed to score on a two-on-one rush, UofT jumped on a poorly played puck by Brock goaltender Connor Ungar and slipped it past him to close the gap to one with less than a minute remaining in the period.
Apparently not satisfied in being outshot by six times their output, UofT jumpstarted their offensive generation in period two, getting a lot more rubber on Brock’s net.
Just over four minutes in, UofT created a turnover at their own blueline, and took it into Brock’s zone on a three-on-one. Toronto’s Billy Moskal feathered a pass to Ben Woodhouse who one-timed it home to tie the game.
The score remained tied for an agonizingly long time, bleeding into the third period.
Finally, with 11:50 remaining in the third, Ethan Simms chipped a puck around a UofT defenceman at the Badgers blueline, taking it all the way in to beat the Varsity Blues goalie far side.
Jared Marino put the nail in the coffin with just over a minute left, potting an empty netter off a slick neutral-zone feed from Jacob Roach.
Following the weekend, star players and the team as a whole are having some fantastic performances to-date.
Roach is fifth in the OUA with 10 goals in 14 games, while Burnie isn’t far behind with nine of his own. In addition, the pair rank fifth and seventh in overall points with 22 and 19 respectively. Roach is also tied for sixth in assists, a position that he shares with Jared Marino, with both players having 12.
Though he has slipped to second in Goals Against Average (GAA), sitting at first in save percentage (SV%) and wins, Connor Ungar still remains the top goalie in the OUA. However, ahead of Ungar in GAA and tied in SV%, Ottawa’s Franky Lapenna is breathing down his neck.
The Badgers as a whole are also having a season for the books. Now 13-1-0, the Badgers not only lead the OUA, but are one of the top teams in Canada as a whole. With 26 points, a 0.929 win percentage and only 26 goals against, there is only one team still ahead of the Badgers in Canadian University hockey: the undefeated University of New Brunswick who are at 28, 1.000 and 24, all while scoring a country-leading 77 goals (second place has 65).
The Badgers are back in action next weekend with a home game against TMU on Friday, Nov. 24th before heading to Waterloo on the 25th to play Wilfrid Laurier. For more information, please visit gobadgers.ca.