Men’s hockey take Acadia 4 – 3
Dylan Matthias, Sports Editor
The Tigers’ men’s hockey team pulled out a somewhat lucky 4 – 3 win over the Acadia Axemen last Friday night in Halifax. An overtime winner by Shea Kewin, who thought he’d been thrown out earlier in the game, gave Dal the win.
Kewin ended a boring, uneventful overtime nearly six minutes in when he cut around Jacob Dietrich and down the left before firing a wrist shot past Axemen goalie Kris Westblom.
“(Dal) are a tough team, they play hard against us every time,” said Westblom. Dal have now won both games against the highly-rated Axemen. “I think there’s a healthy rivalry there.” The Tigers also won 3 – 1 in Wolfville earlier this season.
Five of the game’s goals came in the first period, including, for the second game in a row, three quick goals against the Tigers. After going behind early to a Ron Kelly goal off of a face-off win, Acadia stormed back to take a 3 – 1 lead in a span of ten minutes.
Jay Fehr started the scoring for the Axemen after a scrum in the corner. Andrew Clark threw it out in front to Fehr, who was all alone with all the time in the world to walk around Bobby Nadeau and score.
Nadeau’s starting job was a bit of a surprise given Josh Disher has been carrying Dal on his shoulders of late. But after being pulled mid-week (see page XX), Pete Belliveau went with the goalie of the future against Acadia.
It was a bad idea. With three minutes left in the first and Acadia having only mustered a few shots, Nadeau fell apart. Off a defensive zone face-off for Dal, Nadeau let Scott Tregunna’s wafty wrist shot between his arm and his body.
A minute later a simple Ryan Graham shot led to a rebound off of Nadeau’s chest for Andrew Clark to poke home.
Dal were not going to let this one get away like they had on Wednesday. Pierre-Alexandre Vandall found Ben Breault on the lip of the crease and the electric Dal forward returned it to Vandall from a promising shooting position, catching everyone, including Westblom, off-guard.
Fans piled into Memorial Arena 25 minutes before the puck dropped. A combination of 1990s night for the hockey team and international students’ night meant the arena’s black-and-gold colour scheme was noticeably absent. Regular Tigers fans could be forgiven for wondering where the apathy had gone, at least for one night.
The controversy started ten minutes into the second period. Shea Kewin, who had been involved offensively early in the game, threw himself at Chris Owens in an aerial tackle near the end boards. His skates were well off the ice and the hit made contact with the back of Owens’ head. Amazingly, Kewin only got a minor penalty and a ten-minute misconduct for it. Kewin, who went off pretty quickly down the tunnel, actually thought otherwise.
“He was completely undressed after the second period,” said Breault.
It was a week of strange arena delays at Dal this week. After a bench door broke on Wednesday, Brett Plouffe cleared a puck straight up in the air and broke one of the new lights dangling from ceiling, necessitating a second lengthy delay while the linesmen and arena staff picked glass off of the ice.
Dal took their time about applying serious pressure in the late stages. Although they needed a goal, the pressure wasn’t really sustained until with 1:40 left, Bobby Nadeau went to the bench and Dal pressed hard.
With 42.9 seconds left, Brad McConnell, Dal’s leading scorer, thought he had the puck in the net. According to Westblom, who probably had the best view, he didn’t.
“The puck never went in the net. It hit the post and hit me,” said Westblom. According to him, the goal judge agreed, but the referee called the goal. His tone was sincere when the answered the question. “It’s pretty unfortunate that there isn’t video replay, but that’s the breaks of AUS.”
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