Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
CARONPORT, Sask. – The Dan Dekoning show continued for a second-straight day, much to the chagrin of the MacEwan Griffins men's hockey team.
Stopping 56 of 58 shots, the former Ontario Hockey League goaltender played hero for the Briercrest Clippers as they beat the Griffins 3-2 in overtime on Saturday afternoon to complete a weekend sweep of the defending Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference champions.
If MacEwan thought they'd seen enough of Dekoning on Friday when his 40 saves delivered a 3-2 upset with for the Clippers, their frustrations were doubled on Saturday.
"Very similar," said MacEwan interim head coach Sean Ringrose of the two losses where the Griffins combined to outshoot the Clippers 100-56. "We definitely played better today than we did yesterday, but they're a team that was energized and built on some confidence they had from last night. Their goalie played exceptional again in the net.
"Ultimately, we weren't able to capitalize on our scoring chances in the hard areas and capitalize on the powerplay. That's kind of what ended up killing us."
MacEwan poured 36 shots on the Briercrest net in the opening two periods but found themselves trailing 1-0 when Briercrest's Russell Olson beat Marc-Olivier Daigle at 10:54 of the middle frame on one of just 12 Clippers shots in the first 40 minutes.
Trey Doell scored short-handed on the Clippers' 13th shot just 24 seconds into the third to put the home side up 2-0.
The Clippers then had a stretch of seven-straight shots in just over two minutes early in the third, but Daigle kept them all out, allowing MacEwan to get its legs back.
Jordan Taupert eventually solved Dekoning on the Griffins' 48th shot of the game, cutting the deficit to one with 7:09 remaining.
Then, just over a minute-and-a-half later, Kole Gable scored MacEwan's first powerplay goal of the weekend, tying the contest and sending it to overtime. The Griffins finished the weekend just 1-for-12 with the man advantage.
"We were a little stagnant on the powerplay," said Ringrose. "We struggled to get pucks through to the net. Similar to 5-on-5, when pucks were in the hard areas, we weren't able to corral them and put them in the back of the net.
"If you're not able to compete in the hard areas of the ice and win some of those battles, against a hot goalie, it's tough to beat him from the outside."
From there, the game got to 3-on-3 double overtime and Doell played hero with his second of the game to deliver a win for the Clippers.
Although the Griffins picked up a point to improve to 15-6-1-0, putting them a point ahead of idle Red Deer College (14-4-2-0) for second place in the standings, the Kings have two games in hand and are now in the driver's seat for a first-round playoff bye even though they've lost the season series to MacEwan. Briercrest improved to 7-12-2-1 and have pulled even with Concordia for the final playoff spot, but the Thunder have two games in hand.
The key now for the Griffins will be how much they take this setback as a wakeup call for their remaining six games in the regular season leading into the playoffs.
"We talked about it a little bit before this weekend – I think to this point we've done a pretty good job of being prepared most weekends," said Ringrose. "I think the first game we weren't necessarily ready to do that.
"We've got to be able to outwork teams and find a way to put the puck in the back of the net and capitalize on the chances we have."
The Griffins now head into a bye week before returning to action against SAIT (12-6-1-3), who have suddenly crept within three points of them in the standings. They will host the Trojans on Feb. 14 (6 p.m., Downtown Community Arena) before visiting them in Calgary on Feb. 15 (7 p.m., SAIT Arena).
