The Ravens men’s hockey team defeated the University of Waterloo Warriors and the Wilfrid Laurier University Golden Hawks in back-to-back games on Oct. 19-20.
“I wasn’t very happy with how we played tonight. I thought our goaltending and our power play was really good, other than that I thought we were sloppy,” head coach Shaun Van Allen said. “We turned over too many pucks, we could backcheck harder, you know. But, hopefully that first win helps us and we can relax and go play hockey now.”
The Ravens took an early lead two minutes into the first period against Waterloo when forward Matthew Forchuk fired a wrist shot past Warriors goaltender Trevor Martin for a powerplay goal.
Five minutes into the second period, Forchuk struck again when he received a pass from teammate Jake Smith and shot the puck sailing past Martin for his second power-play goal of the night. The goal would extend the Ravens’ lead to 2-0.
Seven minutes later, with the Ravens on their third power play of the game, defenceman Josh Burnside managed to beat Martin through heavy traffic to give his team a comfortable 3-0 lead heading into the third period.
Eight minutes into the final period of play, with Carleton once again on the powerplay, Forchuk fired home his third goal of the night to earn his first Ontario University Athletics (OUA) hat trick to seal the 4-0 victory for the Ravens.
“Feels really good, coming here, getting used to the guys. Everyone’s been awesome, so it’s been a really easy transition with the coaches,” Forchuk said. “They’ve been really good. All the guys here are awesome, so it feels great to get a win—that’s the biggest thing.”
On Oct. 20, the Ravens opened up the scoring five minutes into the opening period when defenceman Andrew Jarvis pounced on the rebound and sent the puck past Golden Hawks goaltender Tyler Fassl to take a 1-0 lead.
Two minutes later, the Ravens extended their lead to 2-0 when forward Brogan O’Brien fired a wrist shot past Fassl into the net.
The Golden Hawks quickly answered back with a goal of their own when forward Will Cook tipped the puck past Ravens goaltender Francois Brassard for Laurier’s first goal of the game.
Three minutes before the end of the period, with the Ravens on the penalty kill, forward Alexandre Boivin scored on a breakaway to extend the Ravens lead to 3-1.
Six minutes into the second period, with the Golden Hawks on the power play once again, forward Anthony Sorrentino buried a rebound past Brassard and into the net.
Less than two minutes later, with the Ravens on the man advantage, forward Cody Caron sank the puck past Golden Hawks backup goaltender Nick Redmen to retake a two-goal lead at 4-2.
The Ravens lead would be short-lived, however, as the Golden Hawks tied the game up with goals from forwards Danny Hanlon and Michael Silveri heading into the final period.
Forty seconds into the third period, the Ravens retook the lead when forward Jake Smith beat Redmen for his first regular season OUA goal.
The Ravens scored their sixth and final goal on the power play when forward Evan De Haan sent the puck sailing past Redmen and into the net.
With 20 seconds remaining on the clock and their goalie pulled, the Golden Hawks managed to beat Brassard from a shot from Sorrentino.
The Ravens would eventually win 6-5 as the late comeback from the Golden Hawks turned out to be fruitless.
“Well, I think, most importantly, we won the game, and that’s what it comes down to. But, if we’re going to look at the videos and stuff, we’ll see that we didn’t really play as well as we should have and I think we can do much better,” Boivin said after the game.
“Like I said, obviously we’re happy with the two points but we’re going to have to be better in the future and against some better teams. We’re going to have to really bear down.”
The Ravens will look to get their first road wins of the season on Oct. 26 and 27 when they travel to take on the Guelph University Gryphons and Brock University Badgers respectively.
“It’s going to be a big week of work,” Boivin said, “I think we’re just going to have to come prepared all week and work hard and we’re going to have to learn from what we did well and learn from what we did poorly and hopefully we can do better next weekend and really perform well.”
Photo by Tim Austen
