Axemen defeat Tigers 3-2 in OT

Farrell does it again in OT!

The Acadia Axemen kicked off the Acadia Homecoming Weekend with a 3-2 overtime win over the Dalhousie Tigers on Friday night at the Andrew H. McCain Arena in Wolfville. The Axemen would have preferred it not take longer than regulation time, but when Dal tied the game with less than 1 minute to play, the desired script needed to change.

The teams battled to a scoreless opening period that featured steady goaltending from Dal’s Corbin Boes and Acadia’s first year netminder Devin Williams. Dal was able to block many shots, keeping them from getting through to Boes which made his job easier in goal as both team registered 9 shots on goal a piece.

The second period saw the Axemen capitalize midway through the frame when Michael Clarke notched his second goal of the young season, with the assists going to Remy Giftopoulos & Chance Braid. The 1-0 lead held up until the 17:06 mark when Acadia freshman Nick Betz made a great play as he made a stop and spin pass on the tape of Chance Braid who deposited the puck into the net past a fallen Boes to put the Axemen up by two goals. The Axemen outshot the Tigers 16-7 in the second period and the game play was heavily controlled by Acadia.

The third period was going according to the Axemen plan until an errand pass through the middle by the Acadia defence, led to Colton Parsons putting the Tigers on the board and cutting the Axemen lead to one. Acadia continued to control the game and looked to have the win when they broke across the Dalhousie blue line on a 3 on 1, with an empty Dalhousie net, but as second year forward Kyle Farrell went to pass the puck to an open teammate for the tap in, his stick broke and the Dal defenceman Andrew Rieder fed the puck up to Colton Parsons, who then found Alex Pawelczyk open to put the puck past Acadia’s netminder Williams, to even the score at 2 with just :54 seconds to play in the third.

The teams tested out the new CIS overtime format of 3 on 3, with Acadia sending out speedsters Brett Thompson with Kyle Farrell and defenceman Geoff Schemitsch, and the player choice didn’t take long to pay off as Thompson sent Farrell in alone on Boes, and the OT star of a year ago, made no mistake, beating the Dal netminder and sending the Axemen faithful home happy.

Final shots on goal, Acadia 37, Dal 23. Meanwhile both teams continued to struggle on the powerplay, both going 0 for 5. The Axemen are yet to score with the man advantage this season.

Acadia welcomes the StFX X-Men to town tomorrow night, a rematch of a week ago in Antigonish that saw the X-Men defeat Acadia 4-1.

Axemen were without the services of forwards Sam Fioretti, Kris Hodge, Daniel Pettersson & Stephen Harper due to injuries on Friday night.

Prior to the game, Acadia had the 5 newest members of the Acadia Hockey Honour Roll drop the opening puck as Neil Fewster, Kevin Tucker, Trevor Amundrud, Jason Weaver, and Mike Dawson returned to the Acadia University ice. All 5 were members of the 1996 CIS National championship team, and were inducted into the Honour Roll in a ceremony today on campus.