It’s one step forward, two steps back for the St. Thomas Tommies.
After putting together a good performance Friday night in a loss to St. FX, the Tommies took a major step back in putting together a dire performance against the St. Mary Huskies.
“It’s pretty disappointing, you know,” said assistant coach Tim Smith. “We talked about how important it is to put game back-to-back-to-back, and when you take a step or two, or half a dozen in the wrong direction after an effort like last night, it’s pretty disappointing.”
It took a little over five minutes for SMU to take the lead as Justin Wallingford scored on the powerplay with a slap shot from the blue line. The rest of the period wore on without much incident, although Alex Labonte received a ten minute game misconduct for a checking from behind.
It took only four and a half minutes into the second for SMU to double their lead, Cory Tanaka tipping in a Michael D’Orazio shot. STU again didn’t show much in the period, besides a minute long flurry on the SMU goal, but Huskies goalie Anthony Peters stood tall.
Four minutes into the third it was 3-0 SMU. Kyle Pereira took a nice pass from Lucas Bloodoff and he fired in a perfectly placed wrister off the cross-bar and in.
It became 4-0 only 23 seconds later. Tommies goalie Jonathan Groenheyde couldn’t hold onto the puck in front of goal and Ryan Hillier was there to tap in.
“You can’t play this game, just to play it, you need a work ethic. If you don’t have a work ethic you really can’t accomplish much,” Smith said.
STU’s Kyell Henegan, Alexandre Leduc and Nick Brown all received 10 minute game misconducts at the 6:08 mark as frustration and tempers began to boil over for the Tommies. It initiated after Leduc checked Brad Smith into the door on the SMU bench, causing both teams to get in each others faces.
SMU continued to poor it on as Bloodoff tipped in a low slap shot to make it 5-0 with just over 13 minutes left.
Steve Sanza came closest to scoring for the Tommies, but his nice backhand, forehand deke on the doorstep was brilliantly saved by Peters.
“You’ve just got to come back to work and focus on some of the positives from the weekend, “Smith said.
Groenheyde would make one of his 44 saves to deny Chris MacKinnon on a breakaway as the game wound down. The Tommies only had 17 shots all game while racking up 52 penalty minutes in front of 634 fans.
“There’s a lot from Friday night we can look at and continue to do and there’s a lot from tonight we need to look at and turn it around,” Smith said.
