Hockey: AUS Weekly Recap

It was a good preseason start for the reigning national champion UNB Varsity Reds, as they won all three of their games in the week. Tuesday night they humbled their cross-campus rivals, the St. Thomas Tommies, 8-1. On Friday and Saturday night they hosted the OUA's Brock Badgers in the newly refurbished Aitken University Centre, arguably one of the best on-campus rinks in the CIS. Brock is an offensively challenged team, and it showed, as they lost 4-0 and 5-0. They really didn't have an answer for the UNB defence who jumped into the offence all weekend, notching six of the nine goals, three off the stick of second year d-man Jonathan Harty. Brock is a big team (six defencemen and five forwards are 6'2” or taller) with two rookie goaltenders with good junior pedigrees (of course, they're Maritimers!). The Badgers look set to win a lot of low scoring games in the OUA.

The week didn't get any better for STU, as they suffered another 8-1 loss when they travelled Friday to the Island to play the UPEI Panthers. On Sunday the Panthers hosted the UQTR Patriotes, and despite a depleted line-up, managed a 4-1 win. UQTR split their Maritime roadtrip, winning 5-3 Saturday in Wolfville over the Acadia Axemen.

StFX started their preseason on the road Monday night in Port Hawksbury, NS where they were cannon fodder for the Florida Panthers rookie team who outshot the X-Men 58-19 on their way to a 6-1 win. Friday night the X-Men hosted the Axemen in a neutral site game in the small town of Port Hood and lost 4-2, but it was a much closer game with the shots 26-25 in favour of X.

The AUS champion Saint Mary's Huskies had only one game, and they blanked the Université de Moncton Aigles Bleus 6-0 Saturday night in lobster country – Cocagne, NB. SMU's conference leading powerplay seems not to have suffered over the summer, as they picked up four goals on the PP. This was not quite the start new Moncton coach Serge Bourgeois was looking for at his childhood rink.