Redmen Strike Back

Stingers Head to Game 3 After 5-0 Loss to McGill

SportsVince Morello — Published February 14, 2015 | Updated February 14, 2015 at 10:09pm

“I think our compete meter was a lot higher on Wednesday night,” said Stingers head coach Kevin Figsby. “Our fatigue meter seemed to be up tonight and our compete meter seemed to be down.”

“I don’t think we had our best game tonight as a team by any means” said Stingers goaltender Robin Billingham. “We have a whole other level that we can take this to, and I think we’ll do just that on Sunday.

McGill avenged their first game loss when centre Jonathan Brunelle scored just 51 seconds into the game.

“[The Stingers] played a better game than us on Wednesday, and we needed to respond tonight,” said McGill head coach Kelly Nobes.

For the rest of the period, McGill would not let up, peppering Billingham with 13 shots.

Concordia did not give up going into the second period, but a quick goal by McGill took away any momentum the Stingers may have had. Brunelle scored again on a wrist shot in the slot.

Redman Cedric McNicoll scored on Billingham after some slick passes by McGill.

Late in the second, Stingers defender Gabriel Bourret received a game misconduct, putting McGill on a five minute powerplay and leading to another goal for the Redmen. Right winger David Rose slapped a shot from the faceoff circle for McGill’s fourth goal.

Finally Redmen defenseman Samuel Labrecque put the icing on the cake, bringing the final score to 5-0.

With just over seven minutes to go, Stingers goaltender Billingham was pulled in favour of Alexandre St. Arnaud.

“I battled tonight, I fought pretty hard for pucks,” said Billingham. “[There’s] a couple I probably want back there but sometimes that’s just the way it goes.”

When asked about who would start in the goal for the final game on Sunday, coach Figsby said that he’d go with Billingham.

“The only reason I took Billingham out was [because] the score was 5-0 and there were seven and half minutes to go, and he’s starting Sunday’s game,” Figsby said. “Why leave him in there for another five or six shots, or have somebody run through the crease.”

The rivalry between the two teams was in no doubt as the Stingers and Redmen took part in multiple physical altercations, culminating in a scrum after the final buzzer went.

Already looking ahead, the Stingers are preparing for the deciding game on Sunday at McConnell arena.

“We’ll be ready on Sunday, we had a bad game, we started getting negative on the bench but we know what we have to do,” said Stingers captain Olivier Hinse. “We know we’re going to be ready, and we’ll give our 100 per cent.”

Figsby had the same idea.

“What did we do positively on Wednesday that we did not do tonight, and how do we play with that positive emotion on Sunday as we did Wednesday?” Figsby said. “That was our focus in the last five minutes of the game, lets build for Sunday.”