Varsity Reds tickled pink

AUS hockey | UNB downs STU 3-1 in Mark Jeffrey Game before 1,606 fans

Worthy cause or not, the 19th annual Mark Jeffrey Memorial Hockey Game between the University of New Brunswick Varsity Reds and the St. Thomas Tommies on Wednesday night was not pretty in pink.

The Varsity Reds won 3-1 in a 'let's just get this over with' kind of game that was not really the main event this night anyway, and lived down to its billing before a paid crowd of 1,606 at the Aitken University Centre.

Jeff Lee, Kyle Bailey and Daine Todd scored for the V-Reds past STU goaltender Charles Lavigne, who stopped 38 shots. Randy Cameron broke UNB goaltender Derek Yeomans' bid for the shutout at 13:35 of the third period. Yeomans stopped the other 11 shots he faced, four in each period.

The hockey game was kind of the undercard in this one.

Third star.

First star, for the 19th year, was former player and coach, the late Mark Jeffrey. It's 20 years since the former sparkplug player and coach passed away by accident, but there was no game played in 1992. Jeffrey's friend and former team captain, Mike Kelly, was on hand at centre ice, Mark's parents Jim and Barb were at centre ice, his mom clad in the V-Reds' jersey with her son's number 17 on the back, still the only number retired in the history of UNB athletics.

For a minute and 27 seconds, even Mark himself came back to life, a montage of his UNB career presented on the two giant video screens at the west end of the arena, operational for the first time.

Second star - co-star perhaps - was the cause for the night and the week at UNB. Pink was in again at the AUC, with the V-Reds in the pink, right down to their sweaters and socks, in support of raising funds for breast cancer research.

The V-Reds gave the shirts right off their backs for the cause, peeling them off in a post-game ceremony and giving them to ticket winners.

The Tommies donated to the cause too - and more than just the two points in the standings that have become standard when these teams get together - although true to form, they donated those as well.

"The game itself is such a great tradition, with the family and what Mark meant to the program," said V-Reds coach Gardiner MacDougall. "And then you add the Think Pink campaign, a chance to do something special for someone else, it's one of the higher-profile things we've done as a hockey club. The video screens, the dry run for the nationals committee, the TV timeouts...there's lots of things away from the actual game."

"Cancer is a great cause to raise money for and we were very pleased to show our support," said Tommies coach Mike Eagles, whose players had pink tape on their sticks and socks in recognition of the cause.

"It's important to show that we can work together on stuff like this and support each other," said Eagles. "The Mark Jeffrey Game is like our Lou Chabot Game...an important part of their tradition and their program. For me, Mark was a good friend and it has a special meaning that way too."

It wasn't a Rembrandt this night. On an artistic scale, it would be finger painting.

"There was times when we did OK," said Eagles. "We kept persevering. We didn't play as well as we wanted to and they kind of held us in our own end a couple of times. But we seemed to rebound and try to get our composure back a little bit. I thought our guys worked right to the end of the game and that's what we ask of them."

The V-Reds - or the V-Pinks, if you prefer - opened the scoring when Lee snapped a shot from the right circle that beat Lavigne on the long side 6:25 into the game.

It was the only goal of a first period that - forgive them, Mark - lacked intensity, if you dare say such a thing about this once bitter rivalry. Blame the circumstances: two teams at opposite ends of the Atlantic University Sport men's hockey conference standings and destined to finish there, essentially playing out the string. The only thing at stake this night was the V-Reds' 26-game winning streak over the Tommies.

"Full marks to them because I thought they played really well early," said Bailey, a co-winner, along with the idle Hunter Tremblay, of the Mark Jeffrey scholarship. "We had a hard time getting out of our zone by times. Some of that was poor execution on our part. We had a really strong second, and the third wasn't that good, but obviously we got the two points and we're going to start building toward the playoffs.

"With all due respect, it's a tough game to gauge on whether you're ramping it up or not," Bailey said. "There's a lot of pride on the line, but as far as the standings go, there's not a lot of jockeying going on."

The V-Reds worked just hard enough to make it 27, and by the time the teams meet again, it will be five years since the Tommies last won, in October 2006.

Goaltender Lavigne went down briefly, appearing to stretch his groin as he slid across to deny MacNeil a scoring chance with 11:23 left.

On the next foray up ice, Bailey had plenty of time to put his own rebound past a floundering Lavigne.

Todd did a little dipsy-doodle number past Erick Tremblay and deposited it past Lavigne to make it 3-0 at 17:02 and there was a brief burst of passion off the faceoff at centre ice that produced a couple of penalties and the Tommies' second shot of the period shortly thereafter.

Cameron broke Yeomans' bid for the shutout, the only suspense remaining. Well, there was that, and there was the matter of Todd's shoulder.

He left the ice with 12 minutes left and went right down the runway in some discomfort. His shoulder popped out, but he'll return at some point - not as soon as this weekend, when the V-Reds complete the regular season with games at Acadia and Dalhousie - but before the puck drops for nationals.

"It may take five days, it may take 10 days, it may take 14 days, but he'll be back playing," said MacDougall. Hunter Tremblay missed the game with a virus.

The highlights were more around the testimonials from six surviving cancer patients who told their stories on the big screen; the ice-scraping crew who shovelled the goaltender's creases during the television timeouts; the presentation of the Jeffrey scholarship to Bailey and Tremblay, and the presentation of a $7,025 cheque to Shoot for the Cure project chair and UNB women's basketball coach Jeff Speedy to kick off the Shoot for the Cure initiative on the UNB campus which continues with men's and women's basketball games in the Pit on Friday and Saturday and the volleyball matches Saturday and Sunday.