LANCERS EYEING ANOTHER POST-SEASON UPSET
Finally healthy, University of Windsor hockey team wants to make more noise
University of Windsor Lancers players have no doubt that there are some watchers wondering why the club is still playing hockey.
Seeded sixth in the OUA West Division, the Lancers knocked out third-seeded Laurier in the opening round of the playoffs, which sets the team up for a best-of-three match with the top-seeded Ryerson Rams.
Game 1 of the best-of-three series is Wednesday at South Windsor Arena at 8 p.m.
“I think Windsor’s always been under the gun with that,” Lancers captain and fourth-year forward Blake Blondeel said. “Even my first year, we were always the team that wasn’t supposed to be there. I don’t feel like that. I’ve always felt Windsor had a very strong team. We’ve always been a hard-working team.”
And what the Lancers also have is almost a healthy lineup.
“Our record this year truly wasn’t indicative of our team,” Lancers head coach Kevin Hamlin said. “We’ve never been hit by injuries like we have this year. From our last weekend before the new year on, we never had a full lineup. Not once.”
After dropping the first game of the series, the Lancers rebounded to take the next two games against Laurier to move on, but Windsor’s injury list did add forward Chris Scott. He will miss Wednesday’s opener with a shoulder injury.
“It’s what we’ve had to deal with on this team,” Hamlin said.
But the dark cloud of injuries, when the team couldn’t even put 20 players on the ice to practise, has also made the club stronger.
“That rut also brought us closer together,” said Blondeel, who is from Tilbury. “We’ve faced a lot of adversity this year and we’ve shown we can overcome it.”
Before being hit by injuries, the Lancers were just a point out of second place in the division.
“Last year, we counted the number of man games of our top 10 statistical players missed,” Hamlin said.
“There were seven games all year long. This year, it’s 42 games those guys have missed.
“Clearly, when you have your best guys in the lineup, you have the best chance of winning.”
The Rams, who needed three games to eliminate Waterloo in the first round, will be a challenge and Ryerson won both meetings against Windsor this season.
“I think we just realized that we weren’t there for show,” Blondeel said of Windsor’s firstround win.
“We could sit back and take it to them a bit and the confidence fell into place for us.
“Ryerson’s a first-place club, obviously, and confident going in, so if we can keep our confidence up, it’ll be a good show.”
While Windsor might be the underdog in the series, it was two years ago the Lancers were the top seed and lost to sixth-seeded Guelph, which went on to win
the Queen’s Cup. Three years ago, the Lancers were the seventh seed and won the Queen’s Cup.
“There’s such parity in this league,” Hamlin said.
“We’re looking at an opponent and their numbers are staggering. You can get lost in that, but you still have to play the game.
“You can respect a team at the same time play as hard as you can and execute and that’s what we intend to do. We’ve just relied on that all year. Our best needs to be better than their best.
“We started with 20 teams and now there’s eight left. After this weekend, there’s four and three of those go to the national tournament.
“For us to be in that conversation, we’ve been to the national tournament twice in the last four years, I don’t know why anyone would be surprised Windsor’s in the mix again.”
We’ve faced a lot of adversity this year and we’ve shown we can overcome it.