Box Score Ask any CIS hockey expert, and they'll tell you they expected the Waterloo Warriors men's hockey season to have ended well before March 16. But for the dejected Warriors on the ice, it ended one day too early.

Shawn O'Donnell and Cory Tanaka combined for four goals and nine points, and goaltender Anthony Peters made 23 saves as the fourth-seed St. Mary's Huskies topped the sixth-seed Warriors 5-1 on Saturday to earn a trip to the gold medal final of the Potash Corp University Cup CIS championship in Saskatoon.

The loss ends Waterloo's magical run through the OUA playoffs and into the University Cup, as the Warriors eliminated the OUA West's top 3 seeds to reach the CIS championship tournament after a 12-11-5 regular season.  

CIS scoring champion Justin Larson (Buckhorn/) notched Waterloo's only goal of the game just 25 seconds after the opening faceoff. Fifth year veteran Keaton Hartigan (Kitchener/), in what would be his final CIS game, turned away 45 shots in the losing cause.

The Warriors' Cinderella season certainly didn't look over in the game's second shift when, off a faceoff in the Huskies zone, Colin Behenna (Waterloo/) jumped past his check behind the net and centered for Larson, who buried it underneath Peters to give Waterloo a 1-0 lead.

Shortly thereafter, the Warriors had a chance to blow the game open when CIS MVP Lucas Bloodoff was ejected for a head check for the second time in as many days. The game misconduct was accompanied by a five-minute Warriors man advantage, but Waterloo couldn't get sustained pressure and the Huskies killed off the major penalty.

With the penalty killed off, the Huskies evened things with just under four minutes to play in the period when O'Donnell completed a 3-on-2 rush and a pretty passing play to make the score 1-1 after one period.

St. Mary's continued to pour on the pressure in the second period, and the Huskies went in front 2-1 when Tanaka took advantage of a bouncing puck that landed on his stick, poking the loose disk through Hartigan's legs just over six minutes in. Waterloo killed off an extended 5-on-3, and mounted some late pressure in the period, but Peters made a pair of great glove saves to keep his team up 2-1 after forty minutes.

The Huskies blew things open in the third, starting with O'Donnell's second goal of the game – a sniped wrister on the blocker side. That goal eliminated the idle Alberta Golden Bears, who needed SMU to win a 1-0 or 2-1 game to advance to Sunday's final. Just over three minutes later, the Warriors turned the puck over to O'Donnell in their own zone, and Tanaka finished the mini 2-on-0 to put the Huskies up 4-1.

The Warriors let their frustrations get the best of them at times, finding penalty trouble in the game's late stages. While killing off a 5-minute major assessed to Jeff Einhorn (Red Deer/), Michael Strickland rounded out the scoring for the Huskies.

The youthful Warriors will now turn their attention to 2013-14, while St. Mary's awaits the winner of the UNB-UQTR game in Sunday's national championship game.

Notes: Waterloo went 0-for-3 on the man advantage, while St. Mary's went 1-for-7…Warriors defenceman Robin Clarke (Cambridge/) took some shifts on the fourth forward line, as Micky Sartoretto (Sault Ste. Marie/) missed the game due to an upper body injury…Of the 21 players that dressed in the playoffs for Waterloo, 18 return next year.