Opportunistic Golden Bears snap Huskies win streak

A well-rested Huskies squad returning from its first bye week had plenty of energy from the opening faceoff, but the time off may have also taken some of its sharpness away in the early going. The Dogs managed to outshoot the Golden Bears 5-0 in the first five minutes but once Alberta got some offensive zone time it immediately took advantage as McClennon fired a rebound past Roddy Ross to open the scoring, prompting a deluge of stuffed animals from the stands on Teddy Bear Toss night at Clare Drake Arena.

Undaunted, the Huskies continued to press and finally broke through midway through the second period as Carter Stebbings feathered a pass across the goalmouth to Trevor Wong, who sent a three-footer into the open side of the net to tie the score. That’s how the game stood after forty minutes, but the Huskies could easily have led by a few goals if not for several missed opportunities, including four separate breakaways and a lack of success on the power play, which wound up scoring once on six chances.

“We had three breakaways in the second period. It was crazy. If you capitalize on those, maybe the momentum changes a little bit,” Cote said.

The Bears regained the lead early in the third on a near carbon-copy of their first goal as McClennon found himself at the bottom of the left circle to bury another rebound. Alberta then caught a break later in the frame as a Huskies centering pass escaped the Golden Bears zone and Prokop, who had just exited the penalty box, skated in alone and beat Ross to make it a 3-1 game.

The Dogs would get that one back with under five minutes left, finally converting on the power play as Petruic netted his sixth goal of the season following a goalmouth scramble. Saskatchewn kept pushing for the equalizer but with Ross on the bench for an extra skater, McClennon completed his hat trick into the empty net to round out the scoring.

While it was another frustrating result against Alberta for the Huskies, who are 9-1 against their other opponents this season, there were some positives to take away, too. Chief among those was getting their captain into the lineup for the first time as Justin Ball returned from an ankle injury suffered in pre-season play. Liam Keeler also returned to action after a three-game absence, his second such stint on the injured list this year.

But the bottom line is that the Golden Bears are now just a single point away from clinching the season series with the Huskies, which will likely determine who finishes first in the East Division in February.

“Tomorrow’s a big one for us just confidence-wise against these guys in the regular season and then that’s going to give us some swagger going into the second half of the year no matter what happens next weekend,” Cote said. “Then that series at home at the end of January hopefully is going to mean something in terms of the standings.”

Saturday’s rematch is scheduled for 7 p.m. MST at Clare Drake Arena. Catch all the action on HuskieFAN.

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by Ryan Flaherty

Opportunistic Golden Bears snap Huskies win streak

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