Numbers have flattered the Carleton Ravens men’s hockey team all season long, and Friday night was no exception.
The 2019-20 Ontario University Athletic (OUA) East Division winners boasted a university-record 49 points in 28 games and capped the year with an eight-game win streak after producing a decisive 6-3 win against the Laurentian University Voyageurs on Feb. 7 as the finishing touch on their statistical masterwork.
“It was a pretty special year,” head coach Shaun Van Allen reflected after the game. “Credit goes to the guys in that room, they worked awfully hard … you don’t put that kind of record together without having a real strong team.”
Odds favoured the Ravens heading into Friday’s game, as it pitted the team with the best record in the conference against that with the worst. Nevertheless, the Voyageurs organized a strong front early in the game that blockaded an easy route to victory for the Ravens. For much of the first period, Laurentian goaltender Nick Donofrio shone brightest, foiling several promising chances while his forwards generated a handful themselves.
The Voyageurs struck first thanks to forward Ben Morris. Upon entering the zone, a Voyageur punched a slap shot over the Ravens’ goal that bounced off the glass directly in front of the net. Nearby defenders were scarce, so an opportunistic Morris flew to the puck and snapped a low shot past Ravens goaltender Mark Grametbauer for the 1-0 lead.
With roughly eight seconds left in the period though, Carleton was awarded a brief chance at equalizing the score with an offensive zone face-off. They moved the puck quickly, and their hurry paid off when Parker AuCoin dented the net’s back bar with an off-kilter snapshot to tie the game 1-1 with less than a second remaining.
In the second period, the Ravens cracked the stalemate when forward Aaron Boyd gathered the puck by the crease, spun around Donofrio and slipped the puck past his pad for the 2-1 marker. The Voyageurs’ response, however, took all of 13 seconds. Upon crossing the Ravens blue line, Laurentian forward Luke McCaw slung a distant shot through traffic that solved Grametbauer, plugging the score at 2-2.
Within three minutes, the Ravens seized the lead again thanks to one of their premier homefront defensemen. Darian Skeoch rushed into the zone, shovelled a backhand towards his streaking forwards and watched the puck glance off a Laurentian shin pad before entering their net. The Ravens snagged the 3-2 lead, and Skeoch pushed his game beyond a trademark bruiser presence in his own zone.
“I like to play physical, for sure … I’ve also tried to work on my game in the offensive end,” Skeoch said after the game. “I’ve been working a lot with our coach Mark Cavallin, doing skills sessions for the defence and I think I’ve definitely become more mobile on the blue line.”
The Ravens padded their lead once more in the second, when forward Chiwetin Blacksmith extended the score to 4-2 with some laudable persistence. His initial shot was blocked, but he stuck with the puck and immediately launched another shot on net, this one striking the mesh high glove side.
The Ravens’ two-goal cushion split at the seams late in the period, however, Laurentian forward Russell Nowry drove the net with 16 seconds to go in the frame and slid the puck past Grametbauer’s far right pad.
Early in the third, the Ravens bolstered their narrow 4-3 lead when potent forward Cole Carter grazed Donofrio’s right arm with a wrist shot that just squeaked past him to make it 5-3. The Ravens barred a late comeback with Dakota Odgers’ empty-netter, and triumphantly filed back to the dressing room with a 6-3 win to punctuate their monumental regular season.
“Everybody’s ecstatic,” Skeoch remarked about the atmosphere in the room afterwards.
Heading into their first-round playoff matchup against the Royal Military College Paladins, the Ravens hope to profit most from their sheer scoring depth.
“We’re not relying on one line to score, which makes it a little tough for other teams to check,” Van Allen explained. “We don’t have a guy at a point per game, and we’re in first place. I think that helps.”
“We’re just so deep and it helps every night,” Skeoch confirmed as well. “If you look at stats, I don’t know where our first guy would be. It would be way down the board.”
The Ravens’ first playoff game against RMC is slated for Feb. 12 at the Ice House, where they hope to showcase the same enthusiasm, depth and numbers that lifted them to regular season success.
Feature image from file.
