The men’s hockey team were riding a 4-3 double-overtime win from Wednesday night into Friday’s game two against the Carleton Ravens at the Memorial Centre. The sweep wasn’t to be, though, as the Ravens beat the Gaels 4-1 on home ice to force a game three in Ottawa.
Head coach Brett Gibson said overconfidence wasn’t an issue for the fifth-seeded Gaels.
“This team can’t be overconfident. We’ve lost 8-0 and 10-0 this year. We’re the underdog in this series and we can’t be happy where we’re at,” he said.
The Ravens came out hard right from the opening whistle, banging bodies and forcing the Tricolour players into panicked and off-target es. Gibson said that was a trait they were expecting from Carleton.
“That’s their ammo, they’re a big, big physical team,” he said. “If you don’t match that, they’re going to run roughshod on you and that’s what they did. They came out and pounded us and we had some kickback and pushback in the third but it was too late.”
The Ravens took a 1-0 lead into the first period break, but exploded in the second period—scoring three goals on 16 shots, two of those goals coming in the last five minutes of the frame. The Gaels fought back in the third, getting their lone goal from defenceman Brendan Bureau and holding off the Ravens’ attack, but it wasn’t enough.
Defenseman Ben Munroe said the Ravens made the Gaels pay for their mistakes in the second.
“We made a couple of mistakes and they pounced all over us and buried us on them,” he said. “They jumped on us from the start, they were a team playing desperate and we couldn’t match them on the get-go. We played better in the third but too little too late.”
The power play has been a continued problem for the Gaels this season. The Gaels were 0-for-6 tonight with the man advantage, including a 1:30 two-man advantage. Gibson said the problem wasn’t an issue of who was on the ice, but rather what they’re doing with the puck.
“There’s no personnel changes I have to make but when your powerplay unit goes out there, they just can’t lost momentum,” he said. “They’ve got to gain momentum. They don’t necessarily have to score all the time, but they have to gain momentum. And that’s what I’m going to work on in practise is quality. You don’t have to have a bunch of shots for the powerplay to be good, you just have to have momentum.”
Captain Jon Lawrance said the Gaels would need to play Sunday’s game with the same tenacity they showed in the third period of game two.
“We need to play more like we did in the third, with a sense of urgency and we made their defence work in their own end,” he said. “If we’re going to be successful that’s how you’ve got to play. We’ve got to go at them rather than sitting back and waiting.”
Going back to Ottawa on Sunday for the deciding game of the series, Munroe said the Gaels have the confidence to win.
“We’ve got to build off [Wednesday’s] road win. We beat them once on the road so we know we can do it again. We didn’t bring our best today but we will come Sunday.”
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