Courtesy: Huskie Athletics
Thunderbirds earn 3 of 4 points in Saskatoon

UBC beats Huskies by three

Nov 29, 2025 | 9:54 PM

On a night where six of the 11 goals were scored on the power play, Huskie head coach, Brandin Cote, said his team was outworked in even strength situations in a 7-4 loss to the UBC Thunderbirds on Saturday night. “You’ve got to score 5-on-5”, he said. “We didn’t’ do that. We aren’t competing hard enough, and we have to fix that.”

UBC outshot the USask 8-5 in the first period and opened a two-goal lead on back-to-back power-play goals from Josh Williams and Jake Wright to take a 3-1 lead to the dressing room. Cote didn’t make any excuses for the fact that the T-Birds had eight power play chances and scored three times with the man advantage. “There was a few (calls) on either side that didn’t need be called, but you have to kill off the ones you get.”

Huskies forward Josh Pillar scored the first of two at the 4:40 mark of the second period to cut the UBC lead to one, however the T-Birds managed to keep their distance. Jake Lee scored on the power play and Josh Williams scored a minute and a half later to give the visitors a 5-2 lead. Cote then pulled starting goaltender Jordan Kooy who allowed five goals on 13 shots in 28:52 of work.

Cote said the Thunderbird traffic in front of Kooy made for a challenging night. “They were in front of him the whole time, so he didn’t see a lot”, he said. “I just felt at that point of the game we needed to switch for momentum.”

Pillar notched his second of the game midway through the middle frame to cut the Thunderbird lead to 5-3, but less than three minutes later UBC responded with a Chris Douglas power play goal, and it was 6-3 going to the third period. Douglas scored his second of the night in the final frame, while Raphael Pelletier tipped in the Huskies’ third goal of the night with 4:40 remaining.

The Huskies were 3-for-4 on the man advantage in the penalty filled game, while UBC was 3-for-8. Thunderbird goaltender Cole Schwebius got the win stopping 13 of 17 Huskie shots and is now 7 and 1 on the season. Williams finished the night with two goals and two assists, while Sasha Mutala had four assists for Thunderbirds.

“It all comes down to 50-50 puck battles”, said Cote “They won more face-offs tonight and that’s an indicator to me of not being willing to get dirty enough to win. We have the group to do it, but right now we’ve been really inconsistent. Until we figure that out, we are going to have a tough time…but I still believe we’ll figure it out.”

The Canada West, west division leading Thunderbirds, who lost 3-2 in a shoot-out to the Huskies on Friday night, are 13-1-1-1 on the season and have still only lost once in regulation time this season.

The Huskies, now 9-4-1, visit the Regina Cougars on Friday, December 4th before hosting the U of R on Saturday, the 5th, at 7:00 PM, at Merlis Belsher Place.

wray.morrison@pattisonmedia.com

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