By Dylan Freeman-Grist
The men’s hockey team dropped their season home opener against the Concordia Stingers Friday night 5-2.
After a slow first period, where shots ended tied at five-apiece, the Stingers opened up the scoring in the second by capitalizing on a roughing penalty granted to rookie Brandon Devlin.
The newcomer made it up by netting his first goal of the season a few minutes later bringing the score to one all.
Before the second period ended the Stingers rang another two goals, netting pucks past rookie-goaltender Taylor Dupuis first to the top left and than right to take a 3-1 lead.
In the third despite solid power play opportunities, at one point putting the Rams up by two men in a five-on-three, they couldn’t muster the offence needed against a Stingers squad which seemed to be playing with a new swagger under new interim-head coach Marc-André Element.
Devlin did manage to add another goal to his tally for the night, off an assist from captain Michael Fine, but it wasn’t enough to keep up with the Stingers, who grabbed one more goal in the third before finishing the night off with an empty netter in the dying seconds, pushing their tally to five.
The Ram’s squad was playing with a significantly new lineup, 11 first-year players on the team as a whole with seven new names on the roster against the Stingers Friday. The new faces still require some fine-tuning from the bench in regards to combinations according to head coach Graham Wise
“You’re always kind of thinking what is going to ignite the forwards … who would be good playing with who and that’s just and that’s just a process that we’ll keep working on.” said Wise, who emphasized the that a boost in team effort would be his biggest focus after tonight’s result.
The Rams will take on the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières Patriotes tomorrow night (Oct. 10) at the MAC.
With files from Gracie Brison & Quinn MacDonald
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