Dogs Have Eye on Prize

By Darren Zary
of The StarPhoenix

Huskies 2, Dinos 0
A Canada West hockey championship is well within their sights.
You could see it in the eyes of the University of Saskatchewan Huskies on Saturday at Rutherford Rink, where the hometown squad blanked the University of Calgary Dinos 2-0 to sweep their best-of-three Canada West conference semifinal in two straight.

All of the sudden, the pucks were looking a lot bigger for U of S goalie Jeff Harvey, who stopped all 34 shots he faced.

All of a sudden, the opposing net was noticeably larger for Harvey¹s roommate, Keegan McAvoy, who scored both goals for his team in what was his final game at home as the lone fifth-year graduating Huskie.

Saskatchewan advances to yet another Canada West final against the University of Alberta Golden Bears. The best-of-three series goes Friday, Saturday and Sunday, if necessary, at Clare Drake Arena. This time, the winner and only the winner moves on to the University Cup national championship in Moncton, N.B.

It's crazy, said McAvoy. It's a little emotional but we¹re going to where we want to go. At the beginning of the season, we had nationals as the final goal and this is just one step to get there.

I'm just so proud of the way the guys played. Harvey was outstanding. If he plays like that, he's going to carry us a long way. Saskatchewan, which led 1-0 and 2-0 by periods, outshot Calgary 40-34.

Harvey proved unbeatable.

I felt pretty good, Harvey admitted after recording the shutout. The pucks were looking a little bigger than usual, so it was nice.

I was really proud of the guys. The second game of the series is always tough to win. Hats off to Calgary. That was much tougher, probably, than anybody expected. They came and they kept coming and they're a quality hockey team.

But we held on. Give us credit. Our penalty kill was outstanding. That's probably why we won the game. Indeed, the big story was the Huskies¹ conference-leading penalty kill. The Dogs nulified eight Dino power plays, including three 5-on-3¹s for a grand total of 3:56 with the two-man advantage.

We bent but we didn¹t break, said U of S coach Dave Adolph. You get into a championship-type game like this and we had (those) 5-on-3's against us and we killed them all. On two of the 5-on-3's, they didn't even get a shot.

You saw great desperation from our team probably our last 10 minutes when they were going full bore and we had a couple of penalties to kill.

Our leaders stepped up. Brent Twordik probably played the last 10 minutes straight and Jeff Harvey was phenomenal. More than anything, for our whole team, it was full marks for the win. Saskatchewan was 1-for-6 on the power play. Scott Talbot made 38 saves for Calgary.

(With) their penalty-kill, they came hard, they blocked shots and they did what they had to do to win,' said Dinos forward Aaron Richards, a native of Saskatoon who had been heavily recruited by the Dogs.

We battled hard both nights. (Friday) we didn't get the result we needed and that was unfortunate. Harv is always tough to beat. He hung in there and made some big saves when he had to, especially near the end of the game and we were really come on.

We've got a young team and we did go through a lot of adversity. The guys handled it well. We came on at the end and pulled together. It's unfortunate it had to end but, next year, we'll be able to use that and build off that.

Hopefully we can make a run at it next year. Said Dinos coach Scott Atkinson: Harvey played extremely well. Our power play, you've got to get some production out of it but we just didn't seem to find the handle and find the back of the net. That basically told the tale.
Lots of near-misses.

We have a good group of kids. We worked hard. In some ways, it's been a tough year but we¹ve got a bunch of really good guys and resilient people and we gave a good account of ourselves.
In this league, there¹s not much margin for error when it comes right down to it.