Pronghorns men put themselves to the test

lead early in the third on a power play goal from Carter Popoff, but Pronghorns firstyear forward and Pincher Creek product Landon Gross struck for his second goal of the game shortly afterward to pull the deficit back to one.

After the teams lit each other up for 10 goals in the weekend opener Friday night in a 6-4 UBC win, that was it for the goal scoring Saturday as the Thunderbirds staved off a final minute push from the Pronghorns with the extra attacker to hit the road with a 2-0 weekend sweep.

“If I was there as a fan, it was a quick pace, very controlled at times, but intense at times. It had a little bit of everything,” said Pronghorns first-year head coach Murray Nystrom. “I thought it was never a sure thing who was going to win out until the buzzer went. So I guess from that standpoint, it was great.”

Gross scored both Horns goals Saturday in his Canada West weekend debut.

“It was nice to see that we didn’t give up. We had a lot of penalty kills and I thought the guys worked really hard and it was a good push back,” said Gross.

“It was good, you could see some things that we need to build on during the week and work on to get ready for next weekend and keep getting better.”

After a scoreless first period, the Thunderbirds jumped to a 2-0 lead by the 11:52 mark on goals from Austin Vetterl and Quentin Greenwood.

The Pronghorns cut that lead in half shortly afterward as Gross scored his first of the game 13:11 into the second.

UBC regained their two-goal lead 2:52 into the third on Popoff’s man advantage goal, but for the second time in the game, the Pronghorns answered back soon after to trim the lead back to one with Gross’ second of the game.

The teams exchanged chances as Pronghorns firstyear goaltender Taz Burman was called upon to keep his team within a goal, getting a blocker on a close-in chance from Thunderbird Tyler Sandhu before turning aside a shorthanded rush in the dying minutes.

Burman was kept busy with a 45-save afternoon before veteran Garret Hughson came in with a little over a minute to go.

The Thunderbirds outshot the Horns 48-31.

“From our standpoint, we thought it was a better game performance-wise from our group than yesterday,” said Nystrom. “We were trying to put in place some structure and some different scenarios and I thought the guys, for the most part, did a pretty good job of that today. We still have work to do in some areas, but we gave ourselves a chance to win and that’s step number one. The steps beyond that are getting the score in our favour and getting the outcome that we want.”

The Pronghorns are Michigan-bound next weekend as they face some NCAA talent in the Western Michigan Broncos and the Ferris State Bulldogs in Kalamazoo and Big Rapids.

They return to Canada West play Oct. 12 and 13 when they head to Regina to take on the Cougars.

The Pronghorns are in Saskatoon to face the Saskatchewan Huskies Oct. 19-20 and return to Nicholas Sheran Arena Oct. 26 when the Calgary Dinos pay a visit.

“I think there is enough in every zone of the ice that we have to work on, for sure,” said Nystrom. “It’s just building from the successes that we’ve had. We have to pull some successes out of the games and build on those situations and have how we perform in those situations. Once we have that we’ll start seeing some results. We had a pretty good third (Friday) and we talked about using that. As a launch pad for today so I thought we responded pretty well. Obviously, we didn’t get the result we wanted, but will continue to improve and will start getting those results.”

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