Photo by Marc Lafleur
OTTAWA – Less than 24 hours after beating the McGill Redbirds, the Carleton Ravens men’s hockey team was back in action at the Ice House on Saturday night where they took on the Concordia Stingers. In a wild scoring-filled affair, the Stingers would outlast the Ravens for a 7-6 shootout victory.
A well-rested Stingers team got off to a good start against Carleton putting the early pressure on the Ravens. Carleton found themselves in penalty trouble early on and behind 1-0 after Concordia’s Adam Capanelli put a rebound past Carleton’s Mark Grametbauer (Halifax, N.S.).
The Ravens found their legs as the period went on and drew two powerplays for themselves in the opening frame. On a Carleton powerplay, C.J. Garcia (Pickering, Ont.) fed Simon Kerr (Kingston, Ont.) at the blueline where he fired a seeing-eye shot over the glove of the Concordia goalie Thomas Sigouin to make it a 1-1 game at intermission in an evenly matched back-and-forth first period.
The game broke wide open in the second period with the two teams scoring a combined nine goals in the middle frame. Carleton’s leading scorer Aaron Boyd (Winnipeg, Man.) added two goals to his season total making it six goals in four games for the Ravens forward. C.J. Garcia continued his strong first-period performance by sniping a wrist shot off the crossbar and in over the blocker side of the Concordia goaltender. Forward Oliver Castleman (Ottawa, Ont.) scored a pair of goals in the second period for Carleton, his second goal coming off a terrific pass from Sam Meisenheimer (Viking, Alta.). Before the period ended, Concordia got a late goal back to make it a 6-5 game heading into the final frame.
After a wild second period, the Ravens set out to defend their lead and take home the win on home ice. After 15 solid minutes of defending, Concordia forward Maxim Trepanier beat Mark Grametbauer with a late goal to tie the game at 6-6. Overtime solved nothing, and this one needed a shootout. Concordia outscored Carleton 2-0 in the shootout taking home the 7-6 win and the extra point in the standings.
After the game, Carleton head coach Shaun Van Allen spoke about the defensive struggles in tonight’s game.
“We need to take more pride in defending. We need to go back and make sure that we’re executing our system. We need to be a lot stronger on the boards in our own end.”
Van Allen also noted that his team battled hard on little rest.
“That’s our first time playing back-to-back this season, and we knew that Concordia was going to be a well-rested team. They’re a good offensive team and they showed it. We played well in the first 10 minutes of that third period, then gave up a bad goal to tie it.”
