After going down by two goals early, the Colorado College Tigers scored five unanswered goals to
beat the University of Alberta Golden Bears 5-2 Monday night at the Colorado Springs World Arena.
“We were very excited to play this game; it just didn’t look like it in the first period,” said Tigers’ coach Scott Owens, referring to the full opening frame which saw each team score a pair of goals.
Alberta got on the board first with an Eric Hunter power-play goal at 6:49. Hunter shot a Jesse Gimblett rebound past Tigers’ netminder Richard Bachman to put his team up 1-0.
About three and a half minutes later, Gimblett took his own rebound and stuffed it past a sprawled out Bachman for a 2-0 Golden Bears’ lead.
“We were a little bit sluggish in the beginning, but I think that they were pretty good; they were better than I thought they’d be,” said Owens. “They came out and they played smart, they played disciplined, they stayed within their systems, they were opportunistic early and we were asleep in some areas.”
The Tigers narrowed the lead to one around the 15-minute mark with a power-play goal of their own when Nate Prosser wristed a shot from the left face-off dot short-side past Golden Bears’ goaltender Aaron Sorochan. Then, with 1:20 left in the frame, Chad Rau carried the puck around the back of the net and fired it to freshman David Civitarese in the slot, who slammed it home to knot the game at two apiece.
12 seconds after replacing starter Bachman with Drew O’Connell, the Tigers took their first lead of the game at 9:34 of the second period when Rau got a power play tally with an individual effort to muscle the puck past Sorochan.
Rau, who ended up with four points on the night, padded the Tigers’ lead about five-and-a-half minutes into the third period when he fired a short-handed tally past Alberta goaltender Real Cyr, who replaced Sorochan in the middle of the second period.
With each team down a man for coincidental roughing penalties, the Golden Bears pulled Cyr for the 5-on-4 advantage to try to even the contest. However, with 11 seconds left, Brian McMillin scored an empty net insurance goal for the Tigers to seal the victory.
“It wasn’t great, but it was a good starting point for us,” said Owens.
The Tigers next host the University of Alabama-Huntsville for a two game series at World Arena on October 10 and 11.
