Fontaine's second period pair lifts Spartans to home ice victory over UVic

Trinity Western University’s Jarrett Fontaine scored two goals and added an assist in leading the Spartans to a 4-1 win over the University of Victoria on Saturday afternoon at the Langley Events Centre.

The Spartans (13-5-0-2) exploded for three goals in the second period, with Fontaine tallying the first two and Florian Niedermaier potting the third, as the Spartans took full control of the contest to earn a win in their final home game of the regular season.

The Vikes (9-12-0-1) Liam Shaw scored late in the third period before TWU’s Andrew Wheeler rounded out the scoring with an empty-netter.

Spartans goalie Silas Matthys made 25 saves to pick up his 10th win of the season. Victoria’s Michael Fredrick stopped 31 of the 35 shots he saw in the loss.

The win moved the Spartans within six points of Simon Fraser for first place and opened a five-point gap on Selkirk for second place in the BCIHL standings.

“I thought in the second and third periods, we did what we have been working on in practice,” said Spartans coach Barret Kropf. “It’s nice to see the guys putting it all together and it’s nice to get back on a winning streak. It’s about playing simple hockey. There was nothing fancy about today at all. We went to the generic section of the library and pulled out the most generic plays that we possibly could for our power play and penalty kill and just kept things simple. We knew we had to keep it simple and maybe that’s the key, which is probably a good message for everyone including us as coaches.”

TWU was one for four on the power play, while Victoria was held off the scoresheet on five man-advantage opportunities. After a scoreless first period, Fontaine got the goal-scoring party started two minutes into the second when he buried a cross-ice feed from Niedermaier on the power play, beating Fredrick into a gaping net.

Less than three minutes later, Fontaine scored again, grabbing a rebound from in tight and putting a backhand upstairs past Fredrick. Before the period was seven minutes old, Niedermaier put the Spartans up by three when a Fontaine pass found its way to the stick of the Swiss forward and he snapped it to the top left corner.

The Vikes' Shaw got the visitors within two goals at 16:10 of the third period, but after Victoria pulled Fredrick for the extra attacker, Wheeler sealed the Spartans win, slotting a shot into the empty net off a two-on-one.

The Spartans are back on the ice next weekend when they travel to play Eastern Washington Feb. 24-25.

Game Notes: With Fontaine’s three points, he moved into a tie with Victoria’s Shawn Mueller for the BCIHL scoring lead…Fontaine now has 15 goals and 12 assists while Mueller has 11 goals and 16 helpers…TWU finished with a 4-2 record against the Vikes in their season series.