(CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I.) The Saint Mary's Huskies are headed to the AUS men's hockey semifinal, after defeating the UPEI Panthers 4-1 in game two of the best-of-three quarterfinal on Friday night at the MacLauchlan Arena in Charlottetown.
As soon as the puck dropped on Friday, the Huskies quickly took control of the game and never looked back. Their efforts began with a power play goal at 6:17; a shot from the point by Derek Gentile went wide, but the puck bounced off the back boards and to the front of the net, where Ben Allison fired a rebound past Panthers goaltender Jakob Robillard to give SMU a 1-0 lead.
Nearly 10 minutes later, at 16:08, Jaxon Bellamy fed a pass from the blue line to Gentile at the right-wing faceoff dot, who then found Reid Valade in the high slot, and Valade finished the tic-tac-toe play with a low one-timer to extend the Huskies lead to 2-0.
The second period went scoreless but was filled with penalties, with Ben Boyd and Kurtis Henry notably feuding multiple times. They both received 10-minute misconducts at the final buzzer due to a scrum while both teams were exiting the ice. The third period was relatively quiet shot-wise but three more goals were scored.
At 9:58, on a Huskies power play, another tic-tac-toe play occurred, starting with Ben Roger at the point to Charlie Da Fonesca at the goal line and ending with a feed to Jake Uberti along Robillard's right pad for a 3-0 Huskies lead.
All confidence in UPEI was lost by that point, however, at 12:54, they found some life. Patrick Leblanc, positioned along the right boards, found Cole Larkin at the point, who fired a one-timer over the glove of Huskies goaltender Justin Sumarah to put the Panthers on the board.
Sadly, that's all the Panthers had left in the tank against the powerhouse Huskies, who sealed the deal for the game win at 19:55 with an empty-net goal by Jaxon Bellamy.
Sumarah, Larkin, and Gentile were named the game's three stars. The final shot count was 31-22 in favour of SMU. Robillard stopped 27 of 30 shots while Sumarah denied 21 of 22 shots. UPEI went 0-for-2 on the power play while SMU went 2-for-7.
With the win, the Huskies advance to the AUS semifinal, where they will take on the #2 seed Moncton Aigles Bleus with schedule information to be confirmed.
Source: Saint Mary's Huskies Communications