With 47 minutes in penalties and four power-play goals against, Griffins fall 6-2 to Thunderbirds

Brendan Boyle battles for a loose puck on Friday night in Vancouver (Chuck Russell/UBC Thunderbirds).
Brendan Boyle battles for a loose puck on Friday night in Vancouver (Chuck Russell/UBC Thunderbirds).

Jefferson Hagen
MacEwan Athletics

VANCOUVER, B.C. – It's hard to imagine a game with more penalties than Friday's contest had as the Griffins spent a whopping 47 minutes in the sin bin.

Predictably, that was their downfall as they allowed four powerplay goals against in a 6-2 defeat to the UBC Thunderbirds in Canada West men's hockey action.

"We definitely talked about being a disciplined team and I don't think we did a very good job of that tonight," said MacEwan interim head coach Zack Dailey. "Also, on the flip side of that, our penalty kill wasn't very sharp as well. So, taking penalties and not executing on our penalty kill isn't a good recipe for success."

With the result, the Griffins fall to 3-4-0, while the Thunderbirds improve to 4-2-1.

The teams actually combined for 71 minutes in penalties as the T-Birds spent 24 minutes in the box themselves. So, in other words it was a game with zero flow.

"It got a little bit out of hand at the end," said Dailey. "We weren't happy with our discipline and we weren't happy with the way we handled adversity. 

"There were a few calls the guys disagreed with,  but instead of focusing on what we can control, they were focusing on the outside factors."

MacEwan's Ryley Appelt opened the scoring with a short-handed goal 6:30 into the game after converting on a 2-on-1 with Merritt Oszytko.

But UBC roared back to take a 2-1 lead after 20 minutes on goals by Sam Huo and Jack Wismer, the latter being the first of four powerplay goals for the home team on 10 chances.

Ethan McIndoe and Huo man-advantage markers in the second period put UBC up 4-1 after 40.

David Kope scored on a powerplay one-timer with 12:34 remaining to get MacEwan within two before UBC goals by Jake Lee and Jordan Sandhu salted away the result.

Ashton Abel stopped 31 of 37 for MacEwan, while Dorrin Luding made 30 saves on 32 shots for UBC.

If the Griffins can take anything positive out of the contest, it's that when the game was five on five, it was pretty even.

"When the game was five on five, I thought we did a decent job," said Dailey. "We created chances. So, I guess the positive is if we can work on our discipline here and try to play more five on five, we'll have a better chance at being successful."

The teams will meet again on Saturday (4 p.m. MT, Canada West TV).