Like most of the pundits who cover the Atlantic University Hockey Conference, before the regular season started I picked the Universit de Moncton Aigles Bleus and the University of New Brunswick Varsity Reds to lead the pack this season. After this weekend, both teams sit in a first-place tie with the St. Francis Xavier X-Men, but Moncton sure looked more impressive in the journey.
Moncton had their offence flying, defeating the visiting Saint Mary's Huskies 7-3 Friday night, and then 7-5 the following night over the defending AUHC champion Acadia Axemen. As or more impressive was that les Aigles Bleus out shot SMU 42-30 and Acadia 50-38. Karl Fournier (Ile-Bizard, QU) had the hat trick and J-F Laplante (St.-Constant, QU) scored two goals on Friday night against the Huskies but Moncton spread the goals among seven shooters on Saturday against the Axeman.
In Fredericton the teams struggled with the new officiating crackdown on penalties; there were 25 minor penalties called in the UNB-Acadia game and 24 minors in the UNB-SMU game. Friday night UNB blew a 5-2 lead going into the third period against Acadia as the Axeman capitalized on the powerplay and tied the game in regulation. It wasn't until 5:25 of the now ten minute overtime that defenceman Jesse Ferguson (Langley, BC) fired a low hard shot on, yes, a powerplay, to win the game for the Varsity Reds. The next night the V-Reds were ahead 4-3 going into the third period against SMU, but Huskies forward Marc Rancourt (Gloucester, ON) tied it up midway through the final period, completing a tic-tac-toe play on the powerplay. So off to a penalty-filled overtime for the V-Reds, and this night the hero was Darryl Boyce (Summerside, PE) at 6:28 finishing a two-on-one break with Jean-Michel Boisvert (Boucherville, QU) after a hard Dan Rudiseula (St. Catharine's, ON) shot at the other end of the ice went high over the net and caromed off the boards into the neutral zone.
The St. Thomas Tommies were on the road for the weekend and came close to three points for their trip. On Friday they scored two goals each period in defeating the Dalhousie Tigers 6-3. Returning captain Kyle McAllister (Cornwall, ON) scored the first two goals of the game on powerplays to set the tone for the match. On Saturday the Tommies were in Antigonish to play the St. Francis Xavier X-Men and they once again scored the first two goals of the game. Unfortunately for them, the X-Men scored the next three; the winning goal was in the last minute of regulation play by Tyler Dyck (Calgary, AB) to avoid overtime. STU probably felt they deserved a better fate as they out shot X 53-31 in the game.
Friday evening the X-Men were hosting the UPEI Panthers. St.FX squeaked out the win that night as well, with rookie Chris Hulit (Sault Ste Marie, ON) scoring the powerplay winner with less than two minutes to go for the 4-3 victory. The Panthers moved on to Halifax to play the Tigers Saturday night, and came up short again as Dal beat them 7-5 in a scoring fest.
So it looks like the early season is certainly going to focus on special teams until the players adjust to the new level of officiating, which I think can only benefit the university game in the long run, just as it has rightly focused attention on the skilled players in the NHL. To close I would like to congratulate Varsity Reds coach Gardiner MacDougall who set a new UNB record with his 90th win on Saturday night. Gardiner is in his seventh year behind the bench and his teams have appeared in the AUHC playoffs every season he has been there, and of course they won the silver medal at Nationals in 2004.
David Kilfoil is the longtime broadcast partner with Dave Ritchie for STU and UNB men's hockey on CHSR-FM. The comments above are solely his and don't represent the opinion of CHSR-FM or the UNB Varsity Reds.