Victory Hockey
Gee Gees Get Beat To Break Tie
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Concordia’s men’s hockey team made a statement to the Ottawa Gee Gee’s last Sunday at the Ed Meagher arena. They weren’t going to be taken lightly, as they dominated from start to finish in an 8-2 rout.
The victory comes days after they took a whipping of their own to the Carleton Ravens in a 7-2 decision.
“When we play with discipline, we’ve got some talent, so rather than taking penalties and getting into all the rough stuff, we stuck to hockey,” explained Stingers assistant coach Peter Bender. It took a little while before either team got the ball rolling, but ConU did stay out of the penalty box in the first period. This was particularly helpful for them, as both right-wingers François Lantôt-Marcotte and Mike Stinziani found the back of the net in the span of a minute to close off the period.
To start the second, the Stingers picked up where they left off when centre George Lovatsis got a lucky bounce from of Gee Gee’s goaltender Aaron Barton to go up 3-0.
Yet midway through the period the opposition would make things interesting. Within seconds of Stingers defenseman Michael Blundon getting out of the penalty box, Gee Gee’s forward Luc Blain rifled a shot past goaltender Maxime Joyal. But the Stingers were to get that one back by the period’s end as Lantôt-Marcotte added his second of the game to go into the third with a commanding 4-1 lead.
“I think we played a full 60 minutes, and we battled hard which reflected in the score,” said Stinziani, who scored a short handed goal early in the third and added an assist later on to the goal defenseman Kiefer Orsini snuck by Barton.
While the Gee Gees did score in this period, it was clear the wheels had fallen off, as Stingers centres Kyle Kelly and Domenic Martel added a goal each to cap off the big win.
The lackluster effirt on the Gee Gees’ behalf isn’t something that sat well with head coach Dave Leger.
“I think we lost too many battles in our zone and I think we had power play opportunities where we weren’t able to put it away,” he said.
While he didn’t get the result he wanted, Leger was optimistic about the remainder of the season. “The good news is that there’s still lots of time left before the end of the year.”
Meanwhile the Stingers held their heads high after this victory.
“There are some nights when every time you touch the puck, it turns to points.”
–François Lantôt-Marcotte
Concordia’s Men’s Hockey Team
Right Winger
“There are some nights when every time you touch the puck, it turns to points,” said Lantôt-Marcotte, who contributed to four of the team’s goals.
Prior to the game, the Stingers were in a four-way tie with Ottawa, Toronto and Queen’s for fifth place.
With the victory in mind, Bender still saw some flaws with his players that could prove costly on Jan. 26 when the Stingers pay a visit to the McConnell arena to take on the McGill Redmen.
“We’ve got good goaltending but we didn’t clear the puck from in front of the net. McGill will kill us if we don’t do that,” said Bender.
The puck drops at 7 p.m. for the game on Wednesday.
This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 20, published January 25, 2011.
