Patriotes Steamroll Stingers

Third Period Comeback Not Enough to Stop Early Onslaught

SportsTyler Finigan — Published January 23, 2012

A 6-4 loss against L’Universite de Quebec a Trois-Rivieres had Concordia’s men’s hockey team bowing their heads on Jan. 18.

An aggressive game ended in favor of the Patriotes but not without a pile-up of 14 penalties between the teams.

“I’m very proud of my team,” said UQTR head coach Jaques Laporte. “Discipline is something we might need to work on, but the referees called an excellent match and I’m glad it ended well for us.”

Four seconds into the game, defenseman Emmanuel Boudreau took minutes for charging—the first of many penalties in the contest.

“We took a few undisciplined penalties in the third period,” said Stingers head coach Kevin Figsby. “I don’t know what happened with [UQTR]—They’re usually a docile team.”

Teams took turns sending players to the box in exchange for goals. Half the markers scored during the game were during the man advantage.

But among the constant flow of body checks and delayed penalties was a game of hockey, too.

The Stingers were able to start the game with a goal courtesy of captain Eric Begin, but after that brief momentum came five unanswered goals from the Patriotes until Stingers right winger Roberto Mormina stopped the bleeding with his first of the season, in the dying minutes of the second.

For the most part, nothing seemed able to stop the overbearing offense of the second-ranked team in the conference.

According to Figsby, a shortage of players could have been the reason for the Stingers’ performance.

“With the amount of injuries we’ve got, I think we played exceptionally well,” he said. “It would have been nice to have seen a few of our key missing players go up against this top-10 ranked team.”

From Mormina’s late second period goal to game’s end, the Stingers screamed back, picking up their passing game and crawling back to a two-goal deficit—but they just couldn’t close on the lead before the final buzzer sounded.

“We didn’t play as hard as we could have,” said assistant captain Charles-Antoine Messier. “But that just means that next game we will have to try even harder.”