Clippers sweep the weekend

The Saturday afternoon re-match between the Concordia Thunder and the Briercrest Clippers at the Barkman Arena was a hard hitting, end to end, fast paced battle that picked up from where they left off last night. Both teams came out knowing anything could happen and adjusted their strategies accordingly with different goaltenders than the previous game.

The first period saw long stretches between whistles, hard passes and big hits.  With just over two minutes remaining in the period, Briercrest’s defenseman Brandon Kelly finally sniped one past the CUE netminder, Ashton Billesberger and the crowd loved it! 

Going into the second period, Billesberger was replaced due to an injury and Briercrest threw everything they had at the fresh goaltender, Griffin Bowerman, but they were denied until the end of the period when Colton Aikens rifled a shot in, earning his 12th point of the season for the Clippers and moving him into a tie for 3rd place in points overall.

The third period proved to be intense as Concordia was still very much in this game until Caleb Grandfield caught the goaltender moving and popped one in on a beautiful pass by Theo Citrullo at the seven minute mark.  The intensity picked up,  hits got harder, speed intensified and with that,  a flurry of stick infractions, leading to a steady parade to both sides of the penalty box.  Inevitably this led to a power play goal by Reagan Poncelet of the Clippers sealing the fate of the Concordia Thunder. Dominik Tmej from Briercrest, currently sitting second in ACAC goaltender stats for both goals against and save percentages, was a defensive wall for his team, earning a shut out and his 5th win of the season.

When the final buzzer sounded, the Briercrest Clippers came away with a 4-0 win.  Player of the game for the visiting Thunder was #8, Captain Brandon Wallis and for the Clippers, #44 Caleb Grandfield with one goal and an assist in the contest.

Shots in the game were 34 for the Clippers and 28 for the Thunder.  Powerplay opportunities were 6 for CUE and 6 also for the Clippers.