Men’s hockey team continuing strong season

The Concordia Stingers men’s hockey team continued their strong play, snagging three of a possible four points last weekend in their home matches against the Queen’s Golden Gaels, and the Royal Military College Paladins.
Friday night against the Golden Gaels from Queen’s University the Stingers lost 4-3 in overtime.
The Gaels scored first on a power play just four minutes into a penalty filled first period, but the Stingers rebounded on a powerplay of their own six minutes later on Eric Begin’s shot.
The Gaels scored six minutes into the second period, much to the dismay of the crowd, after the referee failed to penalize what many thought was an obvious Gael pick that prevented a Stinger from getting to the shooter.
Concordia rebounded with 3:46 remaining when forward Nicolas Lafontaine fought through traffic and poked the puck past the goal line.
The prettiest goal of the game came off the stick of Stinger Mike Baslyk with with 3:33 left in the third period. Baslyk toe-dragged and deked out two Gael defenders, before gaining more speed and beating Gaels’ goalie Ryan Gibb.
The celebration was short-lived. Queen’s responded just twenty seconds later when Gaels’ defensman Mike Bushby fired a wrist shot pass Lepage on his glove side, setting the stage for overtime and a Gaels’ winning goal with just five seconds remaining on the clock.
“It’s a tough loss to swallow,” coach Figsby said, “We lacked concentration tonight.”
“Our loss was [based on] mental mistakes. It wasn’t physical, it wasn’t systems, it wasn’t not being ready,” he said, “It was mental errors.”
The Stingers found their legs on Saturday afternoon, defeating RMC Paladins 6-4 in a fight-filled physical game.
The physical nature of the game was established early in the first period, rattling the boards with thundering hits. Concordia scored first at 6:19 into the first period on a powerplay goal by Lafontaine with assists from forwards Gabriel Boies and Ryan Smith.
But the Paladins scored on a power play just a minute later with Stingers defenceman Jesse Goodsell in the box for hooking.
The game took a violent turn when Concordia’s Simon Pierre Sauvé was roughed up and lay bleeding on the ice for several minutes. Despite the infraction, no penalty was called.
From then on Concordia dominated the physical play and continued to do so throughout the game. It came with a consequence, however, when with 8:12 left to go in the first period, Nick Sciangula was issued a ten-minute misconduct for shoving a Paladin player down after the whistle blew.
With just over six minutes left to go in the first, defenceman Justin Ciampini fired a shot from the point that beat Paladins’ goalie.
At the end of the first period, outshooting the Paladins 16-3, the Stingers had a 2-1 lead.
Barely two minutes into the second, RMC evened up the score with a powerplay goal and then, with no one guarding the slot Michael Soros tipped in the go-ahead goal.
Mike Baslyk evened up the score for the good guys on a powerplay. The Paladins regained the lead 7:56 into the third period.
Stingers captain Trevor Blanchard tied the game again with just 2:53 left to go. Blanchard received a pass from line mates Marc-André Rizk and Baslyk, right in the slot and wristed the puck past the Paladins’ goalie to make the score 4-4.
The top line of Blanchard, Baslyk and Rizk proved once again why they are one of the top producing lines in the OUA, as all three combined forces on the game-winning goal with just 1:37 left in the game. After an empty net goal by Blanchard the final score was the Stingers 6, RMC 4.
Baslyk was happy with the results but still stressed that the Stingers seem to leave the big goals for the last minute.
“It’s good to score two or three goals in the third period,” he said, “But if we can do that in the first and second, then there’s no telling how good we can be.”
Baslyk said his team detected a weakness in Paladins’ goalie Adam Briggs early on, and attacked it throughout the game.
“He struggled with even just the small dump ins and he’d give big rebounds, so in the second and third we just tried to put everything on the net,” he said, “And it paid off.”
The Stingers face off against cross-town rivals the McGill Redmen on Wednesday at 7 p.m., at McGill’s McConnell Arena.