In their first home match since a four-game trip to Germany, the Concordia Stingers’ men’s hockey team were beaten by a team that played not a game of skill but rather of patience, as the Royal Military College Paladins won 3-2 at Ed Meagher Arena last Friday night.
“That’s not what I was expecting,” said Coach Kevin Figsby at the end of a game that came down to two conflicting styles of play as Concordia tried to outmaneuver RMC.
However, cracking the neutral zone barrier proved futile for the better part of the game. “They played a solid defensive strategy and our offensive strategy wasn’t able to penetrate to the net,” commented Figsby.
The Paladins opened the scoring just under five minutes in the first period when forward Eric Rheaume came from behind the net and found enough space to backhand a shot over the shoulder of Stinger goaltender Chris Wilcox.
Concordia’s power forward Luc Messier had two immediate chances to tie the game.
The first opportunity came when Messier was left all alone in front of the net but could not lift the puck over a sprawled-out RMC netminder John Haggis.
The next chance came shorthanded, when Messier looked brilliant chasing down his man and stealing the puck in the offensive zone. Once again, with a ludicrous amount of time alone against Haggis, Messier couldn’t seal the deal.
Fortunately, things would click before the end of the period for the Stingers when, following a scramble in front of the goal, Mathieu Lendick took a shot from behind the net that appeared to take a lucky bounce in off Haggis to tie the game.
It took less than four minutes into the second period for Messier to net that elusive goal after he corralled a rebound and put the puck in over Haggis’ stick to give Concordia a 2-1 lead.
The second also saw both teams raise their level of aggressiveness, as there was a lot of body weight being thrown around in some hard-checking plays.
Unfortunately this rhythm didn’t work in favour of the Maroon and Gold.
With Lendick sitting in the box for an interference penalty, the Paladins quickly took advantage as forward Adrian Hartley found himself on a breakaway where he roofed the puck over Wilcox’s glove to tie the game.
Thirty-seven seconds later, RMC stunned the home crowd by retaking the lead when a sharp pass from behind Wilcox was fired in by Patrick McDonald, making it 3-2 for the visiting team.
From this point on, statistics would suggest that the Stingers dominated the offence, which they technically did.
Unfortunately, the Paladins tightened up their game and the home team had trouble getting more than a few truly good scoring chances and rebounds were nearly impossible to come by.
Although the shots, 37-26, heavily favoured the Stingers, many of those were longer-range shots that were easily handled.
“Unfortunately we made two more mistakes than they did tonight and they got one more goal,” said Figsby after the disappointing loss.
“It’s two points we were counting on after Christmas,” added Lendick who was named Concordia’s player of the game. “Now we’re going to have to beat those teams ahead of us one more time then we planned to.”
