V-Reds get right to it
Pool A | UNB taking on Calgary tonight; loser plays Western on Friday
It's showtime for the University of New Brunswick Varsity Reds.
The top-ranked team at the Cavendish Farms University Cup men's hockey championship, the hometown favourite, the team on "The Road to Redemption" as the clock on their fan-based website has called this journey since last season's title run was rudely and prematurely short-circuited by the St. Francis Xavier X-Men, hits the ice tonight against the University of Calgary Dinos in the Pool A opener.
Now all they have to do is win.
"We're excited about the opportunity," said V-Reds coach Gardiner MacDougall, who opted for the option of opening up Thursday night at 7 p.m. rather than Friday night, when the loser of tonight's game will face the fourth-seeded University of Western Ontario Mustangs of London, Ont. in Pool A play at 7 p.m. (CHSR-FM 97.9)
"We thought, 'At home, to really kick off the tournament, playing the night game, you're right into the tournament. It will be an exciting night for UNB hockey, an exciting night for CIS hockey, an exciting night for Fredericton."
Showtime.
"This tournament is all about being the best you can in game number one," said MacDougall. "If you're successful there, you get a game number one the next day. If you're successful there, you get a third game number one. That will be the goal of our hockey club."
That's the goal of every hockey club here, of course. All are targeting Sunday night at 8 p.m. as prime time, if you will, when the gold medal game faces off. If the V-Reds are feeling any pressure, it doesn't show.
"I'm the kind of player that I don't mind pressure," said UNB captain Kyle Bailey, who proved it when he scored a pair of goals, including the overtime winner in the fifth game of the AUS final last Friday to deliver the V-Reds to the tournament as the AUS champions.
"I look to find ways to put pressure on myself. There are games in the middle of January that don't mean a whole lot and you look to find ways to put pressure on yourself. This one, you don't need any. There are a lot of eyes on you and the city has pretty high expectations. I don't think it's going to be anything too crazy, but it's going to be an awesome atmosphere. I'm looking forward to it."
"The key in pressure is confidence," said MacDougall. "This group has worked extremely hard, right from Day 1 last summer. They were fit from Day 1, and every game we've played, we've been able to play our best."
No less an opponent than the Dinos can testify to that. V-Reds went west and played the team that evolved into the Canada West runners up back on Sept. 15, and skated off with a 10-2 victory. They beat goaltender Dustin Butler - the goaltender of the year in CIS hockey as it was to develop - for five goals in just over half the hockey game.
Suddenly, that was a long time ago.
Mark Howell is the CIS coach of the year. He's brought the program forward in leaps and bounds over the past six months. He promises his team will be better.
"It's going to be a totally different game," he promised. "Their lineup was fairly similar to how it is today. We have nine guys who didn't play in those games. We added two guys at Christmas (Walker Wintoneak and Aaron Richards), four starters who were injured, and we didn't dress three guys. Saying that, we learned a lot. When you play the best in the country, U of A, UNB, teams like that, you learn the level of intensity and the level of execution they play at. If you want to be at this tournament, you've got play at the same level."
Waiting in the wings are the Mustangs, the fourth seed among the six teams here as representatives of Ontario West but 6-2 losers to McGill Redmen in the Queen's Cup final.
Head coach Clarke Singer in his 12th season, said the word which epitomizes the Mustangs is "balance."
"We don't have any award nominees, we don't have any first-team all-stars, but we've got a great group of young men who have worked very hard every day. We looked around the room in August at one of our first meetings and we had 12 or 13 first year kids, and to say we would have been here at this championship this year would have been stretching it a little bit.
"But we got great leadership and our group kind of embraced our philosophy of trying to get better a little bit every day and take one game at a time,'' Singer said.
The last time Western and UNB were at the nationals together in Thunder Bay, Ont. in March of 2009, they squared off in the national final with UNB winning 4-2.
And here we are: showtime.