The Lakehead Thunderwolves mens hockey team welcome one of their biggest rivals, the No. 10 York Lions, to the Fort William Gardens for a two-game set Friday and Saturday nights. Lakehead enters the weekend with a 3-3 OUA mark (7-6-2 overall) while the Lions are 4-2-1-1 in conference play and 4-7-2-1 overall.
The Thunderwolves are coming off a weekend split with Laurier while the Lions had an OT tie with Western and an OT loss to Waterloo last week. Lakehead sits tied for first in the early season dogfight that is the OUA Far West Division with 6 points with Waterloo. Western and Windsor are both one point behind with 5 points. Both Waterloo and Western have two games in hand on Lakehead. York is in first in the equally tough OUA Mid West Division with 10 points. The Lions are one point ahead of Brock and two ahead of Laurier and Guelph.
Head To Head:
Lakehead is 8-5 overall against York; 5-3 in regular season play, 1-0 in non-conference action, and 2-2 in playoff action. Lakehead finally shook the Lions playoff curse last year when they beat them two games to none in the series; however both games were one goal wins and very hard fought battles. The Wolves have outscored the Lions 55-30 in those 13 games.
York is averaging 2.8 goals per game in OUA player compared to Lakeheads 2.7 while Lakehead is allowing 2.5 goals per game compared to Yorks 2.7.
Lakehead OUA Results:
Sat Nov 5 Lakehead 3 Laurier 0
Fri Nov 4 Laurier 5 Lakehead 2
Sat Oct 29 Lakehead 3 Windsor 1
Fri Oct 28 Lakehead 3 Windsor 2
Sat Oct 22 Windsor 2 Lakehead 1
Fri Oct 21 Windsor 5 Lakehead 4
Lakehead Head Coach Pete Belliveau said his team knows the Lions will be difficult to tame, even at home. We will be hosting our playoff rivals of the past three years and there isn't much to choose between both teams, it will come down to discipline and team play and execution.
The question for the Lakehead faithful this weekend is which Wolves team will show up. The team that was outplayed in last Fridays game vs. Laurier and outshot by a large margin? Fridays game was the only regular season game so far this season that the Wolves have been outshot. Or, will it be the Wolves team that dominated the Golden Hawks the next night in all facets of the game which resulted in an impressive road shutout win for Lakehead?
Hopefully, the Wolves will play off Saturdays fantastic game and use that momentum against the Lions this weekend. The team defense is decent, the goaltending is sharp, but the Wolves need to score more goals more often. Captain Joel Scherban, who set the Lakehead scoring mark last weekend, leads the Wolves in OUA scoring with 4 goals and 3 assists (15th OUA) and can be counted on to lead the team by example. A positive note for Lakehead was Jeff Richards (2g, 2a) pair of goals in last Saturdays win over the Hawks. New linemate Peter Cava also chipped in with two assists.
The line of Mike Wehrstedt, Brad Priestlay, and Mark Robinson continues to play fantastic hockey. If the continue to play as they have, prospects are good for the Thunderwolves. Junior Wehrstedt (2g, 2a) is showing the form he displayed in his freshman season and Priestlay and Robinson are also both playing great two-way hockey. The forward grouping of Andrew Brown, Dan Speer and Shandor Alphonso are also playing some good hockey and if the talented Speer can catch fire offensively, this line has great potential. Murray Magill and Jason Lange are also key with their two-way play and offensive capabilities.
The defense picked it up last Saturday vs. Laurier after a tough effort in the Friday game. Mike Jacobsen (1g, 3a) is starting to collect some points and Erik Lodge (1g, 1a) is playing good two-way hockey. Drew Kivell and Hugo Lehoux have been solid at times and Steve Rawski and Mike Self need to use their size and strength to h