The largest crowd in recent memory was on hand Saturday to see the men’s hockey team step on the backs of their cross town rivals and climb into first place in the Mid-East division.

The 3-1 victory over Ryerson came thanks to a 62 shot barrage on Rams goalie Jonathan Sikkema, coupled by outstanding work between the posts by U of T’s Dave Lemanowicz, who turned away all but one of 24 shots.

“I was kind of pleased with the way we played defensively, but a little disappointed we didn’t score more goals,” said Blues head coach Darren Lowe.

U of T tried to take control of the game right from the get-go and were the only team to have any kind of sustained offensive zone pressure in the opening minutes of the match. After a couple of successive penalties interrupted their momentum, U of T took advantage of their edge in play on a terrific individual rush by Ian Malcolm that he finished with a dazzling back-handed deke.

It would not, though, be a walk in the park for U of T. When Tyler Middlebrook misplayed the puck at his own blue line, Ryerson’s Ryan Love was handed a breakaway and tied the game 1:46 before intermission.

Despite dominating the second period, the middle frame remained tied until 3:28, when team captain Steve Murphy centered a pass from behind the net and Brandon Barbowski crashed the crease to put home a back-hander for the game-winning goal.

Barbowski would also make a clutch play to set up the third period insurance marker, knocking down an attempted pass by Sikkema who got caught out of his crease and centering the puck to Jeff Todd to put into a vacated net to make the score 3-1. Todd also assisted on Barbowski’s winning goal.

While the Blues did a fine job of limiting the scoring chances for the Rams to earn the win, the surprise so far this season has been the style of play the team has been employing.

“At the beginning of the year we thought, well, we’re going to score lots of goals, it’s how are we going to keep them out of our net,” said Lowe.

“We’ve been doing a great job defensively, but putting the puck in the net hasn’t been so great.”

Whatever the formula they have used, U of T now sits in first in the Mid-East division and may now be ready to regain their division championship form of last season.