Jorday Kooy made 32 saves to earn his second consecutive shutout in a 10-0 win over the MacEwan Griffins on January 19. Photo: Electric Umbrella/Derek Elvin

By Ryan Flaherty

back-to-back blowouts

Huskies hammer Griffins for second straight lopsided win

Jan 20, 2024 | 12:50 AM

It’s rare that the sequel tops the original but the Huskies men’s team managed to do just that by blasting the MacEwan Griffins 10-0 on Friday night in Edmonton.

In their first action since a 9-0 win over the Regina Cougars on January 7, the Dogs managed to go one better, hitting double digits for the first time since January 15, 2021, when they scored 11 against Regina.

This time, nine different players lit the lamp led by Dawson Holt’s two-goal effort. Vince Loschiavo extended his point streak to eight games with a goal and two assists, and Ty Prefontaine added three assists from the blueline.

It was a night in which everything went right for the visiting Huskies, and everything seemed to go wrong for the Griffins, who dropped their eighth straight game. Saskatchewan has won three in a row coming out of the holiday break, and showed no signs of rust despite having an unexpected extra week off between games after being unable to travel to B.C. last weekend to play Trinity Western. Those games will be made up February 5 and 6 in Langley.

“It’s great to have the rest but you just don’t know what you’re gonna get sometimes with the timing and everything,” head coach Brandin Cote said. “At times it was still a little bit ugly at the start just with our puck management and (Jordan) Kooy made a couple solid saves to keep us in it, then we got rolling.”

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The Griffins battled the Huskies hard in the first period, outshooting them 14-12, but couldn’t solve Kooy, who finished the night with 32 saves in his second consecutive shutout. Midway through the frame, Justin Ball converted a backdoor feed from Loschiavo on a Huskies power play, and when Holt and Mark Rumsey scored 66 seconds apart a few minutes later, the Dogs were off and running.

Holt’s second of the night opened the scoring in the second, then three-and-a-half minutes later Raphael Pelletier batted a puck out of midair past Griffins goaltender Ashton Abel to make it 5-0 before the game was half done. That was the end of the line for Abel, who was replaced by Eric Ward after allowing five goals on 24 shots.

“We want to put our best foot forward out there. We want to play hard and stick to our program. It’s crazy to get ten but it’s good to see the results when you’re playing the right way,” Holt said.

Ward stopped all 14 shots he faced before the end of the period but in the third, the wheels completely fell off. Keaton Sorensen netted his third goal of the season less than two minutes in, then a short time later Landon Kosior scored the strangest goal of the night on a power play as Ward gloved a shoulder-high shot, then as he brought his arm down somehow dropped the puck through his own legs and into the net. The goal was Kosior’s first as a Huskie since joining the program during the semester break.

Loschiavo tallied his team-leading 11th goal of the year to push the lead to eight before Ben Tkachuk and Cade Hayes rounded out the scoring in the closing minutes. The Huskies outshot the Griffins 48-32 on the night.

Despite having won their last two games by a combined score of 19-0, the Dogs know full well that they can’t get too high on themselves.

“Humility is a big part of that, knowing that we got results today but it’s a new day tomorrow. They’re gonna come out hard. We just gotta stick to our own systems and worry about ourselves,” Holt said.

The Huskies are now 14-5 on the season, trailing both the Mount Royal Cougars and Alberta Golden Bears by four points ahead of their rematch with MacEwan. However Saskatchewan has two games in hand on MRU and three in hand on the Golden Bears. The challenge on Saturday will be not to look past the task at hand as a critical home series against archrival Alberta looms next weekend.

“It’s human nature to think it’s gonna be easy when the score is that lopsided so as a coaching group it’s our responsibility to keep them in check,” Cote said.

Saturday’s game is scheduled for 4 p.m. MST (5 p.m. in Saskatchewan) and can be heard on HuskieFAN.

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