There’s a kind of hush

After dynamic win Friday, Huskies muffle Calgary, shutout for Vicars

By Darren Zary of The StarPhoenix

Huskies 5, Dinos 0
The unbelievable nature of Friday’s comeback by the University of Saskatchewan men’s hockey squad — five short-handed goals, three in 35 seconds, to erase a 4-0 deficit for a 6-4 victory — would be hard to match 24 hours later.
As it turns out, the Huskies didn’t need to.
Instead of being a source of revenge for the Calgary Dinos, Friday’s turn of events did nothing to prevent a letdown by the visitors. An outbreak of penalties killed any hopes of evening the score.
The result was a 5-0 victory for the Huskies at Rutherford Rink. Thomas Vicars made 30 saves as the Dogs improved to 14-3-3 for first place overall in the Canada West conference.
“A win’s a win, a shutout’s a shutout,” said Vicars, who redeemed himself for a 5-1 loss one week earlier to the Regina Cougars that snapped a 14-game undefeated streak.
“It doesn’t matter how we get them right now, we need them all. We’ve got to go 8-and-out to take the league, so that’s what we’re trying to do.
“The defence was amazing in front of me tonight. I barely saw a rebound, maybe one or two. I only had to make one or two tough stops.”
Dean Beuker, Matt Girling, Derek Endicott, Alekcei McAvoy and Colin Johnson scored for the Dogs, who led 2-0 and 4-0 by periods. “We thought they’d come out really hard and we knew we had to match that and push back,” said Girling.
Saskatchewan held a 40-30 advantage in shots, outshooting Calgary 17-2 in the first period when the Dinos took seven of eight minor penalties.
“It’s hard to recover when you spend the whole first period killing (penalties),” said coach Scott Atkinson, whose Dinos fell to 7-11-2. “I didn’t really like the refereeing tonight. They were running our goalie all night and nothing.
“No excuse. You’ve got to play better. We’re a very young team with 12 first-year players and we seem to have no middle ground, we’re either very good or very poor.” Saskatchewan was 2-for-11 on the power play. Calgary was 0-for-6. “I don’t know if there was a whole lot of energy on their side,” said U of S coach Dave Adolph. “They came out all full of whatever they were going to do and most of the stuff is against the law in our league, so they suffered the consequences.
“Maybe what happened last night took the energy
out of them, but it wasn’t the game I expected.”