Hockey: CW recap - T-Birds score surprising sweep

T-Birds topple top 10 team - There was only one sweep this weekend in Canada West action, and it came from the most unlikely of sources - the UBC Thunderbirds. The T-Birds managed to secure a pair of wins over the #5 ranked Manitoba Bisons.

Friday night it took a shootout to break a 2-2 deadlock, with Tyler Ruel scoring the winner on Manitoba netminder Steve Christie to lift UBC to the win.

In the second game of the weekend set in Vancouver, the Thunderbirds would once again need some extra time to topple the Herd, pulling off the feat thanks to Craig Lineker's overtime marker 4:34 into the extra frame to give UBC the 4-3 win.

With the wins it's more than safe to say that this group of T-Birds is for real. After hanging around the Canada West standings through the previous 10 games, UBC proved this weekend they have the ability to string together two solid outings against the conference's elite.

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Bears-Huskies play to exciting split - The #7 Saskatchewan Huskies came into Edmonton this weekend to take on the #1 ranked Golden Bears hoping they could find a way to keep pace with the high scoring Bears, and Saskatchewan did just that.

In the opener the Bears used two goals in the span of 23 seconds from J.P. Szaskiewicz late in the third to score a 6-4 win after the Huskies had fought back four times to even the score.

Saturday would prove to be another tight contest, this time with the Sled Dogs coming out on top thanks to Jesse Zetariuk's second of the weekend to give Saskatchewan a 4-3 OT win.

The split for Saskatchewan, and more importantly the fact that they played toe-to-toe with Alberta for more than 120 minutes of action over the weekend points to the fact that this is a team that seems to have found their stride late in the first half.

The lone top 10 series of the weekend lived up to the billing with two tight contests, and a fitting split.

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Bowles back, 'Horns split - Goaltender Scott Bowles made his regular season debut this weekend for the Lethbridge Pronghorns, but was unable to lift his team to their first sweep of the season, settling instead for a three-point weekend at home against Regina.

Lucas Isley scored the lone shootout goal of the night Friday to give Regina a 3-2 shootout win. Capitalizing on two of their 10 powerplay chances of the night, the Cougars found a way to down the undisciplined 'Horns.

In the series finale Saturday night in southern Alberta, it would be all Pronghorns on the scoreboard with Kris Snopek leading the way with two goals in a 4-0 Lethbridge victory.

The three-point weekend for Lethbridge wasn't enough to lift them out of the Canada West cellar, now sitting a single point back of Regina. With Bowles back in the lineup; however, we should start to see the true potential of this time that came into the season with high expectations.
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