Jefferson Hagen
MacEwan Athletics

EDMONTON – After Ethan Strang and Liam Hughes scored goals 41 seconds apart in the opening two minutes of the game, it seemed the Griffins were on their way to a special evening in their cross-town rival's barn at the Clare Drake Arena on Friday night.

They jumped all over the Alberta Golden Bears and held a 3-1 lead after 20 minutes when Strang scored again before the period was out.

But Alberta hit back with four unanswered goals – including an empty-netter – to rally back and produce a 5-3 victory in Canada West men's hockey action.

"I think we just ran out of gas," said MacEwan head coach Zack Dailey. "I think we did a really good job in the first period of jumping on them. We were first to a lot of pucks; we won a lot of battles, and we spent some time in the O zone. 

"They're a very good skating team," he continued. "They came out with a really strong effort in the second period, and I think we just ran out of gas in the third period, which is pretty disappointing because we put together two pretty good periods before that."

With the result, the Griffins fall to 6-10-1, but won't lose any ground in the playoff race after their closest pursuer for sixth place – Regina – lost 4-0 to UBC. Alberta is now 11-4-2.

Strang, who won MacEwan's Male Rookie of the Year award last season, had been a little quiet by his standards – without a point in four-straight games coming into Friday's match. 

But he scored his seventh goal of the season just 1:05 into the contest when he took advantage of a bobble along the boards between a pair of Alberta defencemen and ripped a short-side shot that made the water bottle dance above goaltender Ethan Kruger's shoulder.

He book-ended the first period with his eighth of the campaign – a short-handed goal off his own rebound after Spencer McLean won the puck out of a battle in the middle of the zone.

"He had a really good start," said Dailey. "The first goal was a really nice one – short-side shelf. And then the second one, he followed his rebound and put the rebound. He's someone we expect to put up points and goals for us and he did that tonight. He was part of giving us a chance to win."

In between was an absolute beauty of a play by Marc Pasemko as he wheeled around the net and hit Hughes with a cross-crease pass through a couple players and the latter made no mistake, one-timing it home.

But Alberta got a first period goal by Noah Boyko and a second period one by Adam Hall to remain within striking distance. Then they outshot MacEwan 11-1 in the third period, tying the game on Mason Ward's tally at 11:32 and going ahead with less than four minutes left on Eric Florchuk's tally. Ward added an empty-netter with 32 seconds left.

Ashton Abel made 38 saves for the Griffins, while Kruger stopped 20 for Alberta.

"It was definitely a disappointing end," said Dailey. "You could definitely feel the emotion on the bench change when they scored that fourth one. Guys had their heads down and we lost a lot of our energy there."

But they'll raise those heads again and come back Saturday for the rematch (5 p.m., Downtown Community Arena, Canada West TV) in what will be their final game of the first semester.

"I just asked guys to get home, get rested and just be ready to leave it all on the line tomorrow," said Dailey. "We have a nice break here where guys can heal up, guys can get some time off the ice. So, our focus is giving our absolute best effort tomorrow. As long as we do that, we can live with the result."