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Home > Articles > Intercollegiate Sport > Time for university hockey teams to display how much they've learned
Time for university hockey teams to display how much they've learned
Posted: February 5th, 2014 @ 9:21pm
By CLAUDE SCILLEY
Players from both teams say they were exposed to significant teaching moments in January.
Just how much learning took place will be revealed this weekend.
The first test for the Royal Military College Paladins will come Thursday night, when they will meet the Queen's Golden Gaels in the 28th annual Carr-Harris Cup hockey game at the Rogers K-Rock Centre.
The regular-season Ontario University Athletics game is vital to the aspirations of both teams - RMC needs to win to keep its playoff hopes alive and Queen's needs the victory to position itself to challenge the Trois-Riveres Patriotes for first place in a game at the Memorial Centre Saturday night.
Players from both teams say that since the Christmas break each club has learned some things about itself that will stand it in good stead as they chase their late-season dreams.
Paladins forward Colin Cook says his team has improved considerably since the beginning of the season, when RMC stumbled out of the gate with 17 straight losses. They've won two of their last seven, taken a point from four of their last 11 games and thereby sustained playoff hopes into the penultimate weekend of the schedule.
"We've improved a lot," said Cook, a political science student who is the only fourth-year cadet on the team, and just one of three fourth-year players.
"We're very heavy on the younger guys and the more experience the guys have gotten under their belt the more we've developed. We've become calmer, we don't run around as much, we're more comfortable staying in the system, guys know their roles better, and our goaltending has really improved."
RMC's overtime win Friday over Nipissing - with two goals in the last three minutes of the third period to tie - speaks to the poise the young players are starting to develop, Cook said.
"We don't panic and throw it away halfway through the third period anymore."
Queen's, meanwhile, has had to overcome its own crisis of confidence in the past month. After starting the season without a regulation-time defeat in their first 17 games through early January, the Gaels lost three in a row - and four of six - in a three-week span.
In that time, Queen's was 0-4 against McGill and Carleton, the other ranked teams in the division.
The Gaels have won four out of their last five, but they were against RMC, Concordia and Nipissing, teams that collectively won just 15 of 72 games this year.
Though Queen's, 16-4-5, is just three points out of first place in the East division, skeptics still see a team that got fat on the weaker opponents and is unable to beat the top teams. A win over Trois-Rivieres would not only boost the Gaels' position in the standings, it will do much to elevate them from best-of-the-rest status and establish them as genuine contenders.
In those recent defeats against Carleton and McGill, Gaels captain Corey Bureau says his team acquired vital knowledge.
"We learned a lot about what we need to do in order to close the games out," he said. "We can't just be happy just playing good games against the top teams.
"We took a lot away from those games and now we know what it's going to take to win playoff rounds. We can't - wait for them to score in order to get excited. We've got to jump on them. We've got to be able to take the lead."
Thursday's Carr-Harris match starts at 7:30. Queen's, which has won the last six Carr-Harris games in a row, leads the series 17-8-2. The Challenge Cup was presented in 1986 by the International Hockey Hall of Fame to mark the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the oldest hockey rivalry in the world, which was first contested on the Kingston harbour ice in 1886.
Saturday, the Gaels will host No. 5-ranked Trois-Rivieres, 20-4-0 and winner of its last 13 in a row, at 7:30 p.m. at the Memorial Centre. Meanwhile, RMC will be playing at Nipissing against the team it's trying to catch for eighth place and the division's final playoff spot.
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