Axemen lose in shoot-out vs Moncton in preseason play

Submitted by Mitchell Racine, Acadia Sports Information Office

WOLFVILLE, N.S. – The only preseason game being played in Wolfville this year, fans were given a little taste of what’s to come in the 2014-2015 season. Tonight’s game was the second meeting in preseason between both teams. The Axemen captured a 4-2 in New Brunswick last week.

With a preseason record of 2-0-0, after defeating, Dalhousie, and Moncton earlier last week, this game comes just one week before the Axemen head across the border to face off against the NCAA #7 ranked Quinnipiac Bobcats and the NCAA #16 ranked Northeastern Huskies. Before heading south, the Axemen will visit Liverpoopl, NS to take on Dalhousie this Friday night for the second of two preseason meetings.

The Acadia Axemen open the regular season in 17 days, in Halifax, when they play the Dalhousie Tigers at 7:00pm on October 11.

Over 1000 fans were in attendance for tonight’s first preseason game at the Andrew H. McCain Arena. The game started off pretty slow, with both teams having fair chances at potting the first goal; however, it was Acadia’s third year forward Brett Thompson who opened the scoring.

The play started on an offensive zone sequence, cycling the puck beautifully, when captain Liam Heelis got the puck in the far corner, fired a hard pass to a wide open Tyler Ferry. Ferry, with great patience, outwaited the defenseman and found Thompson who made no mistake in wristing one past Moncton’s Adrian Lemay.

The second frame saw the ice start to tilt in Moncton’s favour, as they scored two goals in the first six minutes. The first came from a shot from the top of the circle by Alex Saulnier, which left a juicy rebound at the top of the blue paint with Acadia’s Brandon Glover having no idea where the puck was located. Luc Williams grabbed the rebound and flipped one over Glover’s pad, tying the game at one.

Moncton’s second goal was only seconds later, when Steve Lebel, after intercepting a pass, took a snapshot with a two Acadia players screening Glover, giving him almost no chance as the puck went far side and low to the glove hand side to give Moncton a 2-1 lead.

With the second period winding down, rookie Remy Giftopoulos brought the puck past the blue line, lined one up and took a slapshot that actually broke his stick in two, which resulted in a puck sliding along the ice allowing Scott Trask to tip the slow moving puck in between the legs of Lemay.

The third period went scoreless and five minute overtime period resulted in an eventual shootout. Thompson scored on Acadia’s first attempt changing his speed from fast to slow and sneaking it five hole. However this was not enough as Moncton went on to score on both the next two shots to take a 3-2 shoot-out win.

The three stars of the game included first and third stars , drian Lemay who made 38 stops including two point blank opportunities in the first and third star Alex Saulnier who had an assist and scored the shootout winner. Acadia’s Daniel Polizano was named the second star of the game.

Acadia’s next home game, and first regular season home game is Homecoming weekend on Friday October 17 when they host the UPEI Panthers.