Hockey
Men’s hockey off to semis
Twenty-one wins, 42 points and the Ontario University Athletics West division title. Yet, after 55 minutes of game two against the upstart University of Ontario Institute of Technology Ridgebacks, all of the accolades the Western Mustangs men’s hockey team earned seemed meaningless.
Enter Yashar Farmanara. Down one game to the Ridgebacks and trailing 2-1 with less than five minutes left in the third, Farmanara stepped up, tying game two and leading Western to victory, turning the tide in the series.
“We got better as the series progressed. UOIT is a very difficult team to play against,” Mustangs head coach Clarke Singer said. “We were happy with the series victory because UOIT really pushed us. Hopefully it’ll make us better going forward.”
After their 16-game winning streak was snapped earlier in the season by the Ridgebacks, the Mustangs started to struggle, going .500 over their last 10 games. Despite winning the division, the Mustangs had to be wary of this opening playoff series.
“We had high expectations coming in, being seeded first,” Mustangs winger Chris Corbeil said. “But at the same time, we were pretty aware that UOIT had some big wins and we had struggled against them too. We knew we were going to be in tough.”
In game one the Mustangs managed to open the scoring on an early Joe McCann goal, but were shut down the rest of the way by goaltender Jason Guy, who made 36 stops.
The Ridgebacks capitalized on two of their four power play opportunities in the second period and didn’t look back.
“I think it was disappointing more than a shock. We certainly knew if we didn’t play well and they did, anything can happen,” Singer said. “It left us no wiggle room after that.”
The second game, in Oshawa, appeared to be the same story. Ryan Spencer opened the scoring in the first period before Mustang defencemen Ryan Martinelli responded in the second. Two minutes into the third, Ridgeback Tony Rizzi potted his second of the series, setting the stage for Farmanara’s heroics.
“Obviously the start wasn’t exactly what we wanted but by the end we pulled things together,” Corbeil, who scored the fourth goal, said. “We were definitely happy to turn it around in game two there.”
The Mustangs pressured UOIT for the rest of the game, resulting in Farmanara’s late tying goal. With less than two minutes remaining, Guy gave up a big rebound off of Farmanara’s shot, which winger Kyle Lamb buried for the winner.
The Mustangs returned home for the deciding third game of the series, looking to move on to the semifinal.
“By game three, we were rolling and carrying most of the momentum,” Corbeil said.
Western certainly rode their momentum, with three goals in the first period. Regular season leading scorer Keaton Turkiewicz opened the scoring seven minutes in after tipping a Martinelli point-shot past Guy.
Though UOIT would respond with a short-handed goal, Western put the game away with two goals in two minutes from Martinelli and veteran Patrick Ouellet.
Defencemen Adam Nemeth and Jason Swit rounded out the scoring for the hard-earned 5-1 victory.
The Mustangs now take on the seventh-placed Windsor Lancers in the OUA West semifinal.
“Windsor is a hard working team. They’re a lot like UOIT,” Corbeil said.
“They had a great series [against Waterloo] and they’ve gotten better as the year progressed,” Singer added.
“They’ve got great goaltending. We’re going to have to make sure we get the puck deep and put pressure on [Windsor goalie Jim] Watt,” Singer said.
To counter Watt, Western will need another good series from goalie Keyvan Hunt. Hunt struggled earlier in the year, but has been excellent this past month, allowing an average of less than two goals a game. In the three games against UOIT, Hunt sported a .934 save percentage.
“He did a great job in those three games. We’re looking forward to Keyvan having another real good series against Windsor,” Singer said.
The Mustangs will also need to work on their special teams play. The power play that scored at a 24.3 per cent success rate during the season went one for 18 in the three games against the Ridgebacks.
“We didn’t get the power play going as well as we should have,” Corbeil said.
“As the series wore on, our penalty kill and power play got better. Windsor has great special teams so we have to make sure both our power play and penalty kill are executing,” Singer added.
The Mustangs will open the series against the Lancers on Wednesday night at Thompson arena. Game two will be in Windsor on Friday night. If the teams split the first two games, the series will return to Thompson on Sunday night to decide who moves on.
— With files from Arden Zwelling
