By Daniel Carrero
With 42 seconds left in the game and a goal from first-year forward Mitch Martin, the Ottawa Gee-Gees defeated the Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Bold men’s hockey team 4-3 in the semi-finals of the University Cup (U Cup) at TD Place on Saturday afternoon.
Despite the loss, the Bold will play for the U Cup bronze medal against the Saskatchewan Huskies on Saturday evening.
Both teams arrived at the semi-final matchup having played overtime against their respective quarterfinal opponents on Thursday. The Bold—who played the longest game in U Sports history—won 5-4 against the Mount Royal Cougars, while the Gee-Gees looked to maintain momentum after winning 3-2 against the University of New Brunswick Reds, the top seed in the tournament.
While the Bold were the favourites coming to this matchup, the Gee-Gees continue to impress as hosts and will be in the U Cup’s final for the first time in the program’s history.
“No one really had us. As the underdog, we’ve been saying underdogs are hungry dogs and hungry dogs get to the bowl first,” said Martin. “That’s just how we’ve been planning and that’s our attitude.”
Despite playing 143 minutes against the Cougars, the Bold kicked off the first period with no visible signs of fatigue. However, the hosts knew how to focus their efforts with heavy body checking and relentless crashing to the net—the energy made for a tight and physical game.
“We knew [TMU] basically played three games the other day, so our main thing was to get on them early, make them pay the full price for going back and getting pucks off our forecheck,” said Martin.
Looking to create havoc, third-year Bold forward Will Portokalis snowed second-year goalie Franky Lapenna as the Gee-Gees netminder covered the puck. This sent him to the penalty box for unsportsmanlike conduct and the Gee-Gee’s to the power play, their strong suit during the regular season. Ottawa finished second-best in the Ontario University Athletics in power play percentage with 24.1.
Ottawa moved the puck around well, and with 38 seconds remaining in the power play, Martin found himself completely unmarked outside the face-off circle and fired a shot past third-year goalie Kai Edmonds and into the top left corner. Though the Gee-Gees power play has been inconsistent in the post-season, the opening goal sent local fans at TD Place into a collective scream to celebrate a first-period lead.
“Our associate coach Justin [Stevens], is obsessive in his power play. I don’t think there’s a coach better prepared than him in Canada,” said Gee-gees head coach Patrick Grandmaitre. “He adapts, he modifies, he tweaks.”
The Ottawa fans at TD Place persistently booed and applied pressure to the Bold during the start of the second period, with help from hundreds of hand clappers that replicated the sound of a rattlesnake ready to attack.
Nevertheless, TMU managed to work under pressure. At the eight-minute mark, first-year forward Jordan D’Intino scored the first goal for the Bold, and less than two minutes later, third-year forward Ian Martin scored to put the Bold in the lead at 2-1.
Both goals came from a very similar sequence of play, shooting pucks from afar and generating wide-open chances in the crease after the puck bounced off the defenders and goalie.
Nevertheless, the lead was short-lived—the second period proved the most fruitful for both teams.
Much like against the Reds, the Gee-Gees were not going to go down without a fight. With a quick succession of passes in the offensive zone, Ottawa found a way to tame the Bold and score two consecutive goals to close the frame. Fourth-year forward Bradley Chenier and second-year forward Vincent Labelle took the lead back at the 16 and 19-minute mark respectively, bringing the score 3-2.
With a lot of work and catching up to do, the Bold pushed but struggled to create grade-A opportunities in the third period. Yet, after 15 minutes of very slow play, the Bold found a way and tied the game at 3-3.
After fourth-year forward Aleks Dimovski sent a long pass through the neutral zone that Gee-Gees first-year forward Andrew Belchamber seemed to possess, but Bold graduate forward Kevin Gursoy tracked him down, recovered the puck and sent a centring pass to first-year forward Tyler Savard, who sent a quick shot through Lapenna’s five-hole. The goal was Savard’s first since Jan. 10 and came after he saw just a handful of shifts in Thursday’s five-overtime affair.
After scoring what they hoped was the goal to send them into overtime, the Bold’s chance at playing in their first U Cup final came down to avoiding mistakes. But when they did make one, Ottawa had the answer to finish the game, through Martin.
With 42 seconds on the clock, following a face-off win for the Gee-Gees that got the Bold scrambling, fourth-year forward Charles-Antoine Roy’s shot on net bounced off Edmonds’ pads and fell into Martin’s skates. Martin—who went through open heart surgery in October 2024 and only debuted with the Gee-Gees over the winter break—made quick work with the puck and secured their spot in the U Cup final.
“What a story, you know—open heart surgery at the start of the year, not able to play the first half season and then building and getting ready to play,” said Grandmaitre about Martin. “In playoff tight games, you need big guys like that that can play physical, that can push off of people and be a menace around the net.”
Now the focus for the Bold will be to win the last game of the season and bring home the first national medal in the program’s history—a bronze.
“You tell the guys, ‘Hey, you can lick your wounds. Be sad now [but] when you leave that room, heads high and there’s a job to do tomorrow,’” said head coach Johnny Duco.
UP NEXT: The Bold will compete in the consolation final for a U Sports bronze medal against the Saskatchewan Huskies on Sunday. Puck-drop is set at 11 a.m. at TD Place.
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