The Varsity Blues men’s hockey team hosted the University Lakehead Thunderwolves Friday night, losing 5-7 in front of a raucous Varsity Arena crowd.
The Blues got on the board early, with grinding forward Connor Cleverley breaking the deadlock just over a minute into the game. Cleverley walked in from the faceoff dot and wristed a short side shot for his first goal of the season.
After the Thunderwolves tied the game with a rebound goal 18 minutes into the frame, the Blues again took the lead with a minute to play. Assistant captain Jeff Brown took a huge hit from a Lakehead defender, cut to the goal and provided a screen for Dylan Heide to a point shot. Lakehead goaltender Justin McDonald never saw the shot, nor the rebound, which veteran forward Tyler Liukkonen tapped into the open net.
The Blues had a poor start to the second period, conceding three goals in the opening six minutes. Lakehead rookie Austin McDonald blasted a shot right under the crossbar to start the onslaught, then third-year forward Carson Dubchak converted a beautiful cross-crease pass beside the U of T goal a minute later. Two minutes after the Dubchak marker, rookie Jake Wright scored his first Ontario University Athletics (OUA) goal on a nice tip-in to end the hellish sequence.
The Blues didn’t lay down though, and star forward Michael Markovic scored on a power play at the mid-point of the period to put Toronto within a goal heading into the final frame.
Following an early Lakehead goal that widened the margin to two, the Blues began to control the play, and were rewarded when Heide point shot took an odd bounce off the end boards and ended up in the net behind a confused Justin McDonald.
After Thunderwolves sophomore Kelin Ainsworth again widened the Lakehead lead to two goals, Blues veteran Paul Van De Velde took advantage of a brutal McDonald turnover to make the score 6-5 heading into the final minutes of play. Alas, that was as close as the Blues came to pulling off the comeback, and the Thunderwolves added an empty net goal in the last thirty seconds to seal the victory.
It was a disappointing loss for the Blues given that they outplayed the Thunderwolves for long stretches of the game, but consistency is crucial in high-level hockey. Captain Andrew Doyle summed up the team’s problem concisely: “In this league, when you take ten minutes off, teams are going to hurt you and that’s what we did. We took ten minutes off in the second period and they scored three goals.”
Doyle was also quick to praise goaltender Garrett Sheehan’s performance, stating bluntly that the score doesn’t do his keeper justice and only “shows how badly [the Blues] played defensively.” Sheehan has indeed been excellent so far this season, and his 4.75 goals against average is not indicative of his quality play.
