Antigonish, NS – The STFX X-Men took to home ice at the Charles V. Keating Centre Friday night, skating to a 3-1 exhibition victory over the Dalhousie Tigers.
The game marked the first university game action for 12 X-Men on the current roster. Head coach Brad Peddle noted it was great to get in a game after 18 months. "We have two-thirds of our team who hadn't played an AUS game yet so I thought this was a great way for them to get introduced to the intensity and the speed."
"Both teams, even for an exhibition game certainly played like it was a regular season game, so when you can play those kind of games this early I think it's a great thing and will prepare us for the regular season when it even gets tougher."
The X-Men took an early lead just over five minutes into the game when Connor Roberts connected with Patrick Kyte on the power play. Kyte fired off a shot from the far side of the faceoff circle to beat Tigers netminder Connor Hicks. Josh Nelson also assisted on the play.
Joseph Raaymakers started in goal in the X net, making some timely saves as the 1-0 lead held up after 20 minutes of play.
Both teams switched out goalies midway through the second period, following a second X-Men goal.
Zach Trott buried a rebound in front of the net after Hicks made the initial save on a Matthew Struthers shot.
Reilly Pickard replaced him in goal while Blade Mann-Dixon came in for the X-Men. Peddle noted after the game that, "I thought both our goalies were really good tonight, making some big saves when they needed to in key times. I thought we had a lot of chances on their goalies and they made some great saves as well."
One shot did get by the X net as Darien Kielb scored a power play marker for the Tigers at 14:13 of the second period. His screen shot through traffic beat Mann-Dixon as Barrett Kirwin and Derek Gentile assisted.
The X-Men took the 2-1 advantage into the dressing room after two periods.
Liam Hawel rounded out the scoring in the game with the second power play goal of the night for the X-Men. After Struthers took the puck on an end-to-end rush, Pickard saved his shot but Struthers found his own rebound and fed an open Hawel in the slot who made no mistake.
Shots ended in favour of the home team X-Men at 40-34.
Peddle was pleased with the play of his squad commenting, "Overall I think the group effort was where we wanted it to be and it was great to see some of our new guys like Struthers, Hawel and Trott who had good nights for us, but also for other guys like Bruggen-Cate and Nelson who we haven't really seen play yet. For our fans and those watching online it gave them a chance to see what kind of players we have so it was a great first effort for sure."
STFX will be back in pre-season action next weekend when they travel to Moncton on Friday night and host Saint Mary's Saturday night in a pair of exhibition games.
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Courtesy Krista McKenna, STFX Athletics