EDMONTON, AB – After a 3-1 loss to MacEwan on Friday night, the Saskatchewan Huskies were looking to redeem themselves in Edmonton. The Dogs came out strong and fast, crusing to a 5-1 victory over the Griffins. The U SPORTS No. 4-ranked Huskies upped their game as much as the Griffins lost theirs, outshooting MacEwan 63-18 in the process.
"I think it was all about effort and (not) willing to do the hard stuff that we were successful with yesterday," said MacEwan interim head coach Zack Dailey. "Obviously, we beat a really good team yesterday and of course they're going to come out and they're going to be pissed off and they're going to be playing hard. We weren't ready to match that intensity."
After being outshot 31-29 by the Griffins on Friday, the Huskies came out with a game plan to shoot early and often on Saturday. What resulted was the sixth-most single-game shots total by a team in a Canada West men's hockey game since that record started being tracked by the conference in 2005.
Davis stopped all 16 shots the Huskies threw at him in the first period to keep the game scoreless, but the Huskies turned up the volume and ripped the knob off in the second period with 31 shots in that 20-minute span alone.
Three of them went in as
Jaxan Kaluski scored twice in less than four minutes before Carter Stebbings one-timed a sneaky
Brayden Camrud pass from behind the net past Davis 6:56 into the middle frame.
The Griffins finally got some offence going in the first minute of the third period. Zach Webb was stopped on a breakaway by
Jordan Kooy before the Huskies' attempt to clear the zone was picked off by Brecon Wood and he dished it to Webb for a cross-seam pass to Kobe Mohr, who buried a one-timer for his first of the season.
In what would become perhaps the turning point of the game, though, the Griffins' momentum was sapped just over a minute later when Mohr was whistled for a four-minute slew-footing penalty. Saskatchewan scored twice on the ensuing powerplay on tallies by Liam Keeler and
Jared Dmytriw to put the game to bed.
The Huskies will head back to Alberta next weekend to take on the Mount Royal Cougars (7-4) in Calgary. Games can be streamed live on
CanadaWest.TV.
