Crucial home-ice advantage in the Atlantic university hockey quarter-finals is in the grasps of the St. Francis Xavier X-Men.
The fourth-place X-Men (15-10-2) are two points ahead of the UPEI Panthers (14-11-2) heading into the regular-season finale on Friday night. A St. F.X. win at Saint Mary’s, or a UPEI loss at home to St. Thomas, and the X-Men will get the extra home game in the best-of-three quarter-final with the Panthers.
If UPEI wins and X loses, the teams will finish tied in the standings. But the Panthers hold the tiebreaker based on the teams’ head-to-head meetings.
“Obviously SMU’s a good team and is playing well this year, but this is about us,” said X-Men freshman forward Brad Cuzner. “Playoffs are about us and not about the other team. We want to play the same game against any team and bring St. F.X. hockey to whichever rink we’re going to.”
“P.E.I. has given us trouble this year,” added Cuzner, whose club sports a 1-3 record against the Panthers this season. “Home ice wouldn’t be bad for us, having the home crowd behind our backs. Anything can happen in this league, anyone can beat anyone. That home ice helps out as much as it can.”
The sixth-place Moncton Aigles Bleus (12-9-6) could still squeak into fifth and face St. F.X. in the opening round, but that’s a tall order.
The Aigles Bleus will need to beat the CIS No. 1 UNB Varsity Reds in their regular-season finale Friday night and have the Panthers lose to the cellar-dwelling Tommies (3-23-1) for Moncton to move up a position in the standings.
If not, then the Aigles Bleus will face the third-place Acadia Axemen in the other AUS quarter-final. The playoffs will begin next week.
Saint Mary’s and UNB have byes to the best-of-five semifinals.
The X-Men are coming off a weekend in which they upset nationally ranked Acadia 3-2 last Friday at home and then squeaked out a 2-1 decision over the host Dalhousie Tigers on Saturday.
With only one player among the league’s top 20 in scoring (Jason Bast), St. F.X. will more likely grind its way to a victory. Over half of the X-Men’s results this season were decided by a goal. They’re 8-6 in one-goal games.
“We’ve been known as a hard-working team,” said Cuzner, who’s tallied seven goals and 10 points in 27 games. “We won’t beat any team with skill but we will work teams down and come playoffs that’s what teams should expect.
“We’ve been working really hard over the last few practices and we brought that into last weekend and hopefully we continue that this weekend and beyond. We seem to be peaking at the right time.”
One of the X-Men’s strengths lies in goal. The tandem of veteran Joseph Perricone and rookie Drew Owsley have split crease duties with Perricone playing a mere 21 minutes more than Owsley.
Perricone is sixth in the conference with a 2.86 goals-against average while Owsley is third with a .911 save percentage.
“I hate to be Peddle (head coach Brad Peddle) because both of our goalies are playing so well, you don’t know who to put in nets,” Cuzner said with a laugh. “The good thing about it is that you feel confident every night that you’ll get good goaltending and down the stretch, that’s what we need.”
(gmacdonald@herald.ca)