February 25, 2016

UQTR’s offence shines in Game One win over Ridgebacks

OSHAWA, Ont. – The UQTR Patriotes proved they are the No. 2 ranked team in the country for a good reason on Wednesday night as they skated to a 6-1 victory over UOIT in game one of their best-of-three OUA eastern conference semifinal series.

UOIT

UQTR

Final	1	2	3	T
UOIT	0	0	1	1
UQTR	3	2	1	6

UOIT

UQTR

Final	1	2	3	T
UOIT	0	0	1	1
UQTR	3	2	1	6

OSHAWA, Ont. – The UQTR Patriotes proved they are the No. 2 ranked team in the country for a good reason on Wednesday night as they skated to a 6-1 victory over UOIT in game one of their best-of-three OUA eastern conference semifinal series.

After beating Queen's 4-3 in the deciding game of their quarter-final series on Sunday, the Ridgebacks knew they would be in tough against the top-ranked Patriotes who entered the game on an 11 game win-streak.

A slow start would haunt UOIT as they trailed 3-0 just over half way through the first period.

"That wasn't the start we wanted obviously," said head coach Curtis Hodgins. "We wanted to go in and keep this game tight and next thing you know we're down 3-0. When you do that against a team like that, you're in trouble. They don't give up much."

Mathieu Lemay opened up scoring five minutes in with a shot from outside that beat goaltender Breandan O'Neill (Ilderton, Ont.). After Pierre-Maxime Poudrier made it 2-0 at 12:27, the offence kept firing as defender Martin Lefebvre scored less than a minute later after a clean face-off win by Felix Plouffe.

In the second period, UQTR continued to roll as Mikael Langlois and Pierre-Olivier Morin scored at 5:10 and 7:20 respectively.

UQTR's Anthony Verret would take on one more goal in the third period, capping off the six-goal night. UQTR came into the postseason average a league-high five goals per game.

The lone bright spot for UOIT came with five seconds left in the game when Mike Robinson (Stouffville, Ont.) scored his first career playoff goal to break up the combined shutout effort by Sebastien Auger and Charles-Etienne Martin. Danny Elser (Hopewell Junction, N.Y.) and James Woodcroft (Milton, Ont.) added assists on the play.

Despite the lopsided scoreline, Hodgins was not upset with his team's effort but knows that they need to tighten up defensively in order to win back-to-back games in Quebec this weekend.

"It's one of those games where I don't think we played that bad. I don't think we gave up a ton," said Hodgins. "They're an opportunistic team with a ton of skill and when you give them a chance, it's in the back of the net."

"We'll regroup mentally. We'll clean up a couple of things in practice and get on that bus and try and steal one on Saturday to put the pressure back on them."

Shots would finish 34-21 in favour of UQTR that included the Patriotes outshooting UOIT 12-3 after 20 minutes.

Going into the series, fans were expecting UQTR's power play unit to be the difference maker but that was not the case in game one as they were 0-for-5 with the man-advantage while UOIT was 0-for-4.

Game two will take place in Quebec on Saturday, Feb. 27 at 4 p.m. If the Ridgebacks pull off a victory, game three will go on Sunday, Feb. 28 also at 4 p.m. in Quebec.

QUICK LOOK AT THE RIDGEBACKS
Overall Record: 23-13-3
Conference Record: 18-8-2

Next Game: Sat. Feb. 27 @ UQTR (4 p.m.)