Casavant, Mills lead the way as Spartans shut out Selkirk on the road

Three goals from Logan Casavant and a shutout from Lucas Mills propelled Trinity Western University to a convincing 7-0 road victory over the Selkirk College Saints on Friday evening at the Castlegar Sports Complex.

With their sixth consecutive win to open the season, TWU improves to a league-best 6-0-0-0 on the year. The loss drops Selkirks record to 4-3-0-0, tied for second in the BCIHL standings with Vancouver Island University.

“It was a good old TWU vs. Selkirk rivalry game again tonight," says TWU head coach Barret Kropf. "It was a really fast paced game with a lot of energy from the crowd which both teams fed off of. We played really tight in the first period and held a 1-0 lead that we maintained into the second. They got into some penalty trouble and we were able to capitalize on a few with a couple quick ones to put them on their heels. From there, we continued to use our speed to our advantage."

Jarrett Fontaine, Josh Sylvain, Brandon Potomak and Kade Vilio also scored for the Spartans, who have scored a league-best 35 goals through just six games.

TWU opened the scoring early in the first period, with Spartans captain Fontaine scoring just over three minutes into his season-debut to make it 1-0 TWU.

The Spartans then doubled their lead in the second period, with Casavant scoring off a rebound on the powerplay for his first of the game to make it 2-0. 18 seconds later Sylvain scored off a Dylan Sakatch feed in front to stretch the TWU lead to three. Casavant added another with 6:32 to go, before Potomak scored late in the second period to make it 5-0 TWU heading into the final frame.

Casavant then buried the hat trick on the powerplay nine minutes into the third period, before another powerplay marker from Kade Vilio 25 seconds later would push TWU’s lead to 7-0.

Lucas Mills made turned aside all 32 shots faced in the win to earn second star of the game. Tallon Kramer stopped 27 of 34 TWU shots for his second loss of the year.

The Spartans went 3 for 7 (42.9%) on the powerplay, while the Saints were 0 for 7.

"Despite the injuries our group is dealing with right now our next group of guys stepped in and didn’t miss a beat, and that’s what I’m most proud of tonight," says Kropf. "All four forward lines and all three defensive pairings played well, and Lucas was once again doing his thing keeping pucks out of the net. All in all, a really good sixty-minute effort from the team tonight. We’ll rest, regroup, and see if we can get this done again tomorrow."

With his three assists, Evan Last now sits first in the BCIHL with 17 points (7G, 10A) through six games.

Coming into the weekend TWU won their previous game on the road, 5-4 against Simon Fraser. The Saints had won their previous four games coming into Friday’s game.

The Spartans face Selkirk once again Saturday. Face off is set for 7:00 PM at the Castlegar Recreation Centre.