By CLAUDE SCILLEY

Though his team’s fate was sealed in the third period Wednesday night, Brett Gibson believes the slide began long before that.

“I’m more disappointed in the second (period) than the third,” the Queen’s Golden Gaels coach said, after his team surrendered two goals in the final 20 minutes of a 2-1 loss to the Laurentian Voyageurs in the opening game of the Ontario University Athletics hockey playoffs.

“We didn’t have any pushback in the second period,” he said. “We watched and we chased the game the whole period.”

Playing at the Memorial Centre, the Gaels were flying to open the first game of the best-of-three East division quarter-final. Skating well and playing the body with authority, they were, however, generating precious few good scoring chances.

Finally, they were rewarded with a power-play goal by Darcy Greenaway with 64 seconds left in the first period. It was a beautiful three-way passing play that began with Spencer Abraham at the blue line, and was completed by the nation’s highest scoring rookie after a superb cross-crease pass from Andrew Wiebe. 

In the early part of the second period, however, Queen’s took a penalty and Laurentian came to life. Though the Gaels killed the penalty, the Voyageurs retained the initiative and continued to have far better scoring chances. They hit the goal post twice, and were a couple of splendid Kevin Bailie saves from breaking the game open, but it remained 1-0 for the Gaels going into the third period.

Sebastien Leroux scored on a power play in the third minute of the period to tie the game, tapping a rebound into the open side of the net with Bailie down and all the Queen’s defenders reflecting on the save their goaltender just made, apparently oblivious to Leroux’s presence near the crease.

With the score tied, Queen’s had two excellent scoring chances. Wiebe flew past his man on right wing midway through the period, and cut to the net cleanly, but was unable to slide the puck under Voyageurs goaltender Alain Valiquette. With a little more than four minutes left in the period, Warren Steele, driving the net from the blue line to pounce on a loose puck, hit the post from 30 feet out.

Then, with overtime looming less than three minutes away, the Voyageurs cleanly won a faceoff in the Queen’s zone and Dylan Fitze, unguarded 20 feet directly in front of the net, tipped a high shot past a helpless Bailie for the game-winning goal.

“Two individual breakdowns on both goals and they capitalized,” Gibson lamented. “We sit back in the second period and gave them some life, even though we’re up 1-0. We had a breakdown on a penalty kill and then inexcusably lost a faceoff straight back that cost us a goal to lose the game.

“I thought we had a good first (period) and I thought we had a good third. We have enough firepower to win. We had enough chances to score in the third; we just didn’t capitalize.”

Wednesday’s game perpetuated a couple of unflattering stereotypes for the Gaels: they lost by a single goal for the eighth time in 14 defeats (the 12th time if you count games where the outcome was embellished by an opponent’s empty-net goal), and they gave up the winning goal in the third period or overtime for the tenth time in those 14 defeats. On eight of those occasions Queen’s led or was tied going into the third period.

“You can’t hope to win,” Gibson said. “That was my message (to the players): stop hoping to win.”

One thing in the Gaels’ favour is the fact that, though they have to win twice on the road to prolong their season, they’re undefeated in Sudbury in the two years since the Laurentian program was revived.

“This series is far from over,” Gibson said. “It isn’t first to win, it’s the team that wins two games. Last year we won up there, this year we won up there. It’s Olympic-size ice that plays to our favour.

“We made it hard (for ourselves) and we’ve got to find a way to bounce back.”

What must his team do for that to happen?

Gibson didn’t hesitate.

“We’ve got to win faceoffs,” he said. “We’re starting without the puck every shift because our centres win zero faceoffs, and we have to get to the net more. Valiquette is going to stop the first shot. We’ve got to get to the second one.”

The series resumes Saturday night.