Golden Bears top Cougars in season opener

It was raining sevens at Clare Drake Arena Friday night.

The University of Alberta Golden Bears got goals from seven different players in a 7-0 dismantling of the Mount Royal Cougars.

If their season opener is any indication, the Bears are going to make life miserable for a lot of teams in the Canada West conference.

Alberta got goals from Steve Owre, Jamie Crooks, Cole Sanford, Tanner Clarkson, Stephane Legault, Tyson Baillie and Cole Linaker, while Luke Philp and Trevor Cox each chipped in two assists. Clarkson, Sanford and Legault all had two point efforts.

Brendan Burke made 26 saves to earn the shutout.

“It speaks to the depth of our team. When our guys commit to moving the puck, we have guys that know what do with the puck when they find themselves in the right spot,” said Bears head coach Serge Lavoie.

“Overall it’s a performance we can definitely build on.”

It was a tough night for Cougars netminders Wyatt Hoflin and Colin Cooper, who combined to make 31 saves in the loss.

Both goalies played well, despite giving up seven goals. The Bears were just too powerful and Hoflin and Cooper were left hung out to dry on most of the goals.

“I’m always asking them to have that shoot-first mentality when we can wear teams down, but we only had 38 shots, and to score seven goals it shows how the guys see the game,” said Lavoie.

“We don’t want it to be easy on opposing goaltenders, and that’s the way we want to be on a nightly basis. It was nice to get contributions from all four lines.”

Owre didn’t take long to make an impact in his first conference game with the Bears. The former Medicine Hat Tigers forward opened the scoring just 4:02 into the contest.

Crooks gave Alberta a 2-0 lead with three minutes left in the opening frame with a short-handed marker.

Defensively, they completely shut down Mount Royal. The Cougars had only one quality scoring chance in the late stages of the opening period on a late power play.

“That’s the growth of this team,” said Lavoie. “When you commit to the structure and you’re sound defensively, you’re in a better position to get the puck. I was happy with our structure in keeping pucks to the outside and we didn’t give them many quality scoring chances tonight.”

The Golden Bears looked in midseason form in their season opener and will travel to Calgary on Saturday to take on Mount Royal in the second half of their home-andhome series.

“I was really pleased with the effort tonight, but Mount Royal is a great team and we’ll be tested tomorrow to see if we can put backto-back performances like this (together),” Lajoie said.