Spartans explode for five second period goals, top EWU for first win

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Thanks to a five-goal explosion in the second period, the Trinity Western University men’s hockey got its first win of the 2012-13 season as it beat Eastern Washington 6-2 Friday at the Langley Events Centre.

Trailing 2-1 after the first period, the Spartans scored three goals in less than four minutes and added two more later in the second to open up a 6-2 lead that they would take to the final buzzer.

In their last game of the fall semester, the Spartans found a way to win after they had lost 10 straight to start the year. Trinity Western will go into the Christmas break with a 1-9-0-1 record while Eastern Washington, who still has two games left on its fall schedule, leaves Langley with a record of 4-5-0-1.

The Spartans had six different scorers on the night as Josh Stephenson, Trevor Beaupre, Sam Gemmell, Matt Chaput, Jamey Kreller and Nathan Wiebe all notched goals. Captain Brad Bakken, who had been held point-less all season, led the team with three assists while fellow blueliner Tyler Miller had two assists.

Goalie Harry Fredeman stopped 37 of the 39 shots he faced.

For the Eagles, it was Elliott Martin and AJ King scoring while Bret Kellogg, AJ Sanders and Uriah Machuga picked up assists.

Eastern Washington goalie Cash Ulrich stopped 18 of 23 shots before he was pulled in favour of Jason Greenwell, who came in and made 15 saves on 16 shots.

"Everything we practiced this week and everything we’ve been practicing finally came to fruition," said Spartans coach Dwayne Lowdermilk. "The guys never let up and we attacked. We calmed it down in the second period and we executed and that turned out to be the difference. This is huge. It’s a great feeling all the way around."

The Eagles got on the board first when Martin notched his fourth goal of the season with 5:45 left in the first period. However the Spartans' Stephenson, with TWU on the power play, tied it up with 1:59 left in the frame and, for a moment, it looked like the teams would go into the intermission deadlocked. But with just 27 seconds on the clock, the Eagles King restored the visitors’ lead and sent TWU into the dressing room down 2-1.

In the second though, it was all Spartans. Beaupre banged in a rebound at 6:08 of the second and that goal opened the floodgates. Fifty-one seconds later Gemmell blocked a shot in his own zone, skated the length of the ice and beat Ulrich to give TWU its first lead. Just over two minutes after that, Chaput whipped a shot past Ulrich to give TWU a 4-2 advantage.

With Kreller and Wiebe tallying goals late in the period, the Spartans wrapped up its best 20 minutes of the season with a 6-2 lead and having outscored the Eagles 5-0 and outshot them 18-6.

In the third period, the Eagles fired 23 shots at Fredeman but none were able to get by the Spartans goalie. Trinity Western’s Mattias Schmitt was awarded a penalty shot in the third period after he was taken down on a breakaway but he was stopped by Greenwell.

The Spartans are next in action Jan. 5 when they will play Victoria on the road at 8 p.m.

Game Notes: The final shots were 39-39…TWU was 3 for 7 on the power play while EWU was 0 for 5…this was the first game all year in which TWU has allowed less than three goals.