After a disappointing start to their 2022-23 season, the Waterloo Warriors men's hockey team broke into the win column with a massive road victory against a nationally-ranked opponent.
The Warriors got third-period goals from Jack Phibbs (Hagersville, ON) and Jacob Cascagnette (Kitchener, ON), and Dan Murphy (Waterford, ON) turned aside 30 of 31 shots as the black and gold earned a 2-1 victory over the seventh-ranked TMU Bold on Saturday evening in Toronto.
Rookie Simon Rose (Renfrew, ON) had two assists, with Cascagnette and Cole Fraser (Quispamsis, NB) also adding helpers. But on a night when goal-scoring was at a premium, Chase Campbell (Waterloo, ON) made perhaps the biggest play of the game – with under 6 minutes to play and Waterloo clinging to a one-goal lead, the veteran winger made an inspired backchecking effort to break up a shorthanded 2-on-0 and help the Warriors escape with a victory.
The win moves Waterloo to 1-3-0 on the season, while the loss was TMU's first after a perfect 3-0 start. It also helped the Warriors erase a disappointing loss from less than 24 hours before, when they dropped an 8-4 decision to the Western Mustangs at home.
Waterloo was searching to return to their hard-nosed defensive identity against the Bold, although the hosts came out firing in the first period. TMU outshot the Warriors 13-8 in the opening frame, and William Portokalis opened the scoring with his first career USPORTS goal at the 5:14 mark. But the Warriors were able to settle into the game in the later stages of the first, as the Bold took a 1-0 lead into the intermission.
The momentum continued to shift in the second period, as the Warriors began to batten down the hatches in their own zone. The tight-checking middle frame featured no goals, and the Warriors held TMU to a 10-9 shot advantage in the second.
Early in the third, the persistence paid off for the visitors: Thanks to Fraser's effort on the forecheck, Rose wristed a point shot that was deftly tipped in by Phibbs to even the score at 1-1 just over three minutes into the period. Then, just past the midway point of the third, Fraser again fended off a check below the goal line and fed Cascagnette out front, who chipped it home on the backhand to make it 2-1 Waterloo.
The Warriors went searching for an insurance marker with a power play late in the third, but TMU's Jesse Barwell chipped a puck out of the zone and was sprung on a shorthanded 2-on-0 with Kyle Bollers. With two Warriors in pursuit, Barwell hung on to the puck and fed Bollers across the low slot, but Campbell dove and deflected the pass in an outrageous display of effort and hand-eye coordination to prevent the possible game-tying goal. From there, Murphy made some big stops and the Warriors held off the Bold advances, salting away the 2-1 victory.
The Warriors will now return home for a date with the Lakehead Thunderwolves next Friday, October 28 at 7pm, before returning to the GTA to visit the York Lions on Saturday, October 29 at 7:15pm.
