Mills the OT hero as Spartans bounce back to split weekend series with UVic

Jacob Mills muscled his way out from behind the net and slipped the puck under University of Victoria goalie Michael Fredrick for the overtime winner as Trinity Western University beat the Vikes by a 4-3 score on Saturday afternoon at the Langley Events Centre.

A day after the Vikes beat the Spartans 4-3 in an extra frame, TWU turned the tables to earn a weekend split and improve its record to a league-leading 9-1-0-1. TWU is now six points clear of second-place Vancouver Island University (6-4-0-1). The overtime loss sees the Vikes leave Langley with three points from two games and a 2-9-0-1 record.

“My comments don’t really change from last night," says TWU head coach Barret Kropf. "I’ve never known UVic not to have a hard-working team. We knew that, but I think we took it for granted last night. Today, we got back to working hard."

Trailing 3-1 midway through the first period, the Spartans scored twice in the second to eventually force the extra session. Brayden Brown scored two goals for TWU while Trent Vilio tallied the game-tying marker with his first goal as a Spartan.

Jordan Evans, Jake Tesarowski and Blake Holowaty, who assisted on the overtime winner Friday, had the goals for Victoria.

TWU netminder Allistair Duncan made 33 saves to earn his first win of the year, while Frederick stopped a season-high 55 shots.

In a penalty-filled contest, the Spartans were 2 for 11 on the man-advantage, while the Spartans penalty kill held Victoria off the scoreboard on nine opportunities. The Spartans outshot Victoria 59-36.

The Vikes opened the scoring just over a minute into the game, with Evans beating Duncan. However, Brown struck back less than three minutes later when he whipped a shot from the middle of the right circle top shelf past Fredrick.

With the game still not 10 minutes old, Victoria tallied two power play markers in less than a minute, with Holowaty and Tesarowski scoring to put the visitors ahead 3-1.

TWU responded in a big way in the second period, outshooting Victoria 26-10 while tallying two goals to tie the game. Brown notched his second goal of the afternoon, converting at 1:24 of the middle frame, before Vilio evened the score with 7:43 to play in the period.

As they did in the first two periods, the Spartans outshot the Vikes in the third period (15-10), but neither side was able to break the deadlock, sending the teams to overtime for the second game in a row.

"There were moments where special teams took some flow from the game, but once we were five-on-five, I thought we used our speed much better tonight," says Kropf. "We were also way more effective getting pucks out of our zone and we limited our turnovers. We also learned from overtime last night that it’s not pond hockey and we need to play defence. So, today was different. Our guys battled well and we’re pretty happy getting three points out of the weekend.”

Friday’s setback against the Vikes saw Victoria also score within the first minute of overtime, as Carter Huber tallied just 30 seconds into overtime.

With the win, TWU now has nine wins in its last 10 games against Victoria, including the regular season and playoffs, dating back to 2016-17.

The Spartans are back on the Dec. 7 when they play at Simon Fraser University in what is TWU’s final regular season game of the fall semester.