By Josh Young
The Dalhousie University Tigers men’s hockey team dropped their season opener 4-1 to the Saint Mary University Huskies at the Halifax Forum on October 6th.
The Tigers had a rough first period. Saint Mary’s forward, Jake Coughler opened scoring one minute and 15 seconds into the first period. Huskie Calder Brooks, intercepted a pass and took the shot that Tigers goaltender, Corbin Boes saved. Boes couldn’t control the rebound and Coughler knocked it past him for his first AUS goal.
Two minutes later, SMU defenseman Mark Trickett fired the puck from the point. Boes made the save and again couldn’t control the rebound. Bronson Beaton knocked the puck into the net. Score: 2-0 SMU.
With thirty-seconds left in the first period, Huskies’ forward Anthony Repaci scored to make score 3-0.
The Tigers were outshot 14-3 in the first period; they had a slightly better second period where they were outshot 9-5. But in that second period, SMU stretched their lead to 4-0 off a Hunter Garlent goal.
In the third period, on a power play, Dal’s first-year defenseman, Duncan MacIntyre, shot the puck from the point and Saint Mary’s goaltender, Eric Brassard stopped it. The rebound came out and Tigers’ fifth-year defenseman, Myles McGurty shot the puck into the net, scoring Dal’s first goal of the entire season – including the pre-season. First year-forward Chandler Yakimowicz got an assist.
Boes stopped 23/27 shots while Brassard stopped 11/12 shots.
After the game, Tigers assistant coach, Dean Dachyshyn, said the young team was a bit nervous in the first period. They had eight new players in the line-up. He said in the second and third period they started to play better because they were skating more and not standing still.
As for the offense, Dachyshyn knows there will be an adjustment period, especially with their two top-scoring forwards being gone from last year; he thinks the team hit some bad luck early in the year, but they have been working at scoring more goals.
“We’ve been kind of snake bitten a little bit, we’ve been getting some chances,” said Dachyshyn.
“Again for the new guys the pace was quicker and things have been happening a little bit faster so we have been working hard in practice, working on offense, shooting pucks all the time and getting traffic in front of the net, doing all the things we needed to do. But hopefully that was the first of many to come.”
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