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Home > Articles > Intercollegiate Sport > Gaels suffer second straight defeat; RMC thumped in Ottawa
Gaels suffer second straight defeat; RMC thumped in Ottawa
Posted: January 12th, 2014 @ 12:07am
By CLAUDE SCILLEY
For all but 72 seconds Saturday night, the Queen's Golden Gaels were more than a match for the McGill Redmen.
Unfortunately for the Gaels, what happened in those 72 seconds cost them the hockey game.
A three-goal outburst in the early moments of the second period propelled the Redmen to a 4-3 Ontario University Athletics hockey victory over the Gaels at the Memorial Centre.
It was the second loss in as many nights for the No. 7-ranked Gaels, who entered the weekend without a regulation-time defeat in their first 17 games. With the win, McGill, the sixth-ranked team in Canada, climbed into a first-place tie with Queen's in the OUA's East division.
The Gaels had just killed a two-man disadvantage and they were still a man short when McGill's David Rose scored the first goal of the game at 1:07 of the second period. Fifty seconds after that Carl Gelinas scored on a breakaway and the Gaels were in the midst of a collective meltdown. They left Max LeSieur alone at the side of the net and allowed him to get the puck for an easy goal just 22 seconds after that.
"If you let the referee and the emotions get to and (you fail to keep) your head in it for a minute, that team can capitalize and we let that happen," Gibson said.
The Gaels were enamored of neither of the penalties that left the Gaels two men short late in the first period. The subsequent lapses that led to the breakaway and the open man by the side of the net were disturbingly uncharacteristic of the way Queen's has played this year.
Gibson called time out at that point.
"I was just as bad," the coach said. "You can't let a referee get under your skin. I should have done a better job of calming the guys down on the bench in the first three minutes of the second (period). I maybe should have called a timeout after the second goal but I let it go one more and it might have cost us."
While he gathered his players he implored them to remember that 37 minutes remained to be played in the hockey game.
"I told them let's keep our mouths shut and let's go to work," he said.
Get to work the Gaels did. Tyler Moore scored on a rebound just over two minutes later and Jordan Coccimiglio beat McGill goalkeeper Jacob Gervais-Chouinard with a shot off a two-on-one break before the period was 11 minutes old.
McGill answered, however, with its second power-play goal of the night, by Samuel Carrier, just 61 seconds after Coccimiglio's goal.
Down 4-2 going into the third period, the Gaels killed two more penalties before Braeden Corbeth scored his third goal of the year on a slap shot from the top of the right faceoff circle to cut the Queen's deficit to one. A splendid play by Chris Van Laren set it up, as rather than dump the puck into the McGill zone for a line change, Van Laren carred it into the corner, held it until the fresh line got into the Redmen zone, and then passed to the onrushing Corbeth.
A little less than nine minutes remained to be played but the Gaels couldn't get the equalizer, despite pulling goaltender Kevin Bailie for an extra skater during the final minute of play.
"I'm proud of the guys," Gibson said. "I liked the way we played in the third period. We were a shot away.
"We let it get away for three minutes but other than that I thought we were pretty good tonight."
It was a decidedly better effort, Gibson said, than the one put forth by his team in a 4-1 loss to No. 9-ranked Carleton Friday night, the Gaels' first regulation-time defeat this year.
"Last night I did not like us at all," he said. "Tonight we competed. We were in awe last night. We weren't moving our feet. We just sat back and we allowed Carleton to skate through us. We're a fast team when we want to be and I think we proved that tonight.
"I liked us a lot better tonight. (Playing two nationally ranked teams) is a good benchmark and after this weekend I think we're right there."
The Gaels resume play with two games in Montreal next weekend, Friday night at McGill and Saturday afternoon at Concordia.
* * *
Perhaps basking in the glow of their first victory of the season Friday night, the Royal Military College Paladins gave up four goals in the first 15 minutes of their game in Ottawa on their way to being beaten 7-1 by the Carleton Ravens.
RMC got its only goal from Aidan Orbinski in the game's 51st minute.
Carleton got two goals apiece from Joey West and Michael McNamee. Jason Seed had three assists for the Ravens, 13-5-1 and winners of seven of their last eight games.
Carleton outshot the visitors 51-17.
On Thursday RMC travels to Oshawa to play Ontario Tech.
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