The Trinity Western University men’s hockey team fell 6-4 to the University of Victoria to open the second half of the BCIHL season Saturday night in Victoria at the Ian Stewart Complex. The win moves Victoria to 6-7-0-1, while the loss drops the Spartans to 1-10-0-1.
“The boys battled hard tonight, we out-shot them and we saw great things out of our new recruits,” commented TWU head coach Dwayne Lowdermilk.
“Our defence also played well scoring or assisting on three of our four goals.”
The Spartans got on the board on a power play goal from Cody Stevenson.
Trinity Western tied the game in the second period when Spartan captain Brad Bakken took a D-to-D pass and sent a long shot through traffic to beat Victoria’s Sunny Gill. Just when it looked like the Spartans were back in the game Victoria scored three goals in just over two minutes, including two in 34 seconds, to give the home team a three goal lead, 5-2, with just under 13 minutes remaining in the second period.
The Spartans got one back at 15:20 when Blair Murphy found open space by the right circle and converted a rebound on a stuff shot from the left side of the crease to make the score 5-3 for Victoria heading into the third period.
The Spartans got a power play goal midway through the third from Kreller to make it a one goal deficit, 5-4, with over half a period remaining in the contest.
But Victoria got the insurance goal a few minutes later to make the final 6-4 for Victoria.
Tim Zwiers made 29 saves in the loss.
The Spartans went 2-for-4 with the man advantage and had a 40-35 shot advantage.
The Spartans host the Thompson Rivers WolfPack tomorrow (Friday) with puck drop is scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Langley Events Centre.
