Box Score It had to end sometime.
Playing the second half of back-to-back road contests, and enduring a shortened bench, the Waterloo Warriors had their 9-game winning streak snapped with a 3-2 overtime loss to the Queen's Gaels on Saturday night in Kingston.
Gaels forward Darcy Greenway tipped home a Cory Bureau feed just 32 seconds into the extra frame to give the hosts the victory.
Brett Mackie (Whitby) and
Sam Caldwell (Cape Breton) scored for Waterloo, while Bureau and Yannick Laflamme potted regulation markers for the Gaels.
The Warriors started the game already down a man, as an illness forced leading scorer
Chris Chappell (Pickering) to miss the game. With no healthy scratches on the lengthy road trip, Waterloo started the evening with 11 forwards. Then, late in the first period, captain
Joe Underwood (Canton) crashed into the end boards and left the game with a lower body injury, leaving the Warriors with only five defencemen.
Mike Morrison (Hamilton) made 30 saves in the loss for the Warriors, as they fall to 13-6-2 on the season. Kevin Bailie turned aside 34 shots in the victory for Queen's, as the Gaels pushed their record to 9-11-1.
The hosts jumped out to an early lead when Yannick Laflamme found the back of the net just over three minutes into the game. But just 6 minutes later, Mackie found a puck on the doorstep and went high over an outreached Bailie to tie the score at 1-1.
The Gaels grabbed the lead back with a Bureau goal late in the first, making the score 2-1 after the opening frame. Bailie made 15 stops in a goalless second period that featured few stoppages, as the Gaels maintained their slim advantage after 40 minutes.
The Warriors drew even early in the third, and the goal came from an unlikely source. Caldwell pinched down low and found a way to put a puck past Bailie, giving him his first career CIS goal in his third season with the Warriors. Despite a few late chances for each club, the game remained knotted at 2-2 after regulation time.
The extra session didn't last long though, as the Gaels found the winning goal just 32 seconds into overtime. Greenway drove to the net with his stick on the ice, and he ended the Warriors' streak when he converted the cross-crease feed from Bureau.
The Warriors will now look to start a new streak on Thursday night when they travel to Toronto to face the Ryerson Rams. Puck drop is slated for 7:30 pm.
Notes: The Warriors went 1-for-3 on the power play, while the Gaels went 0-for-4…Underwood is still being evaluated for a lower body injury…Mackie extended his point streak to eight games.
