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| Paladins pull out tie in 'Nick' of time
A less likely person to score the crucial goal Saturday night you'd not have found. Before he banked the puck off the Army goaltender in the final minute of the hockey game, lifting the Royal Military College Paladins into a 3-3 tie in the annual exhibition contest, it hadn't exactly been Nick Cregan's week. He missed the Carr-Harris Cup game against Queen's with strep throat. He couldn't eat. He didn't practise until Friday, by which time he'd dropped about 12 pounds. Perhaps a wee bit weak, or maybe just not sharp from the inactivity, Cregan missed the two best scoring opportunities of Saturday's game. After Brent Maurice hit the goal post on a power play in the second period, the puck landed in front of Cregan, less than 10 feet away from an open net. He fanned on the shot. In the third period, a funny bounce off the end boards eluded Army goaltender Brad Roberts, who had left his net to play the puck. Cregan was again looking at an open net from close range, but the stick of West Point defenceman Corey Rudd came from nowhere to deny the opportunity. "After you miss two easy ones like that," Cregan said, "you want to make up for it." Cregan said that thought lingered in the back of his mind as a Memorial Centre crowd of about 3,000 watched Army nurse a 3-2 lead into the final minute of the third period. RMC pulled goaltender Blair Robertson for a sixth skater but for 30 seconds the Paladins hadn't generated a good chance, though, when Cregan took control of the puck in the left-wing corner. He fired toward the front of the net. The puck glanced off the stick of Roberts and into the net. The columns in Nick Cregan's ledger of luck suddenly were a little closer to balancing. "I saw him kind of cheating," said Cregan, hoping with an impish grin that people might believe he hit the goalie on purpose, but unsure he'd be able to sell the idea. "I was mostly looking at the two guys in front," he said. "I was going to go for those guys but I figured I still can't miss and if I got a lucky bounce it might go in." Cregan confirmed that it was, indeed, a relief to score that goal. "I missed two open nets earlier," he said. "I kind of let the team a little when I missed them. I was just glad I could do it for some of the fourth-year guys." Though the teams played a scoreless overtime, and the game ended in a tie for just the seventh time in the 75 games of the storied series, for RMC coach Kelly Nobes there was relief, too. His team has made a nasty habit of letting other teams come from behind to catch up this year, and for him to see it happen the other way around made the tie almost as good as a victory. "All those guys worked so hard tonight," he said. "We haven't had a lot of bounces in the second half [of the season] and I told them after the Queen's loss on Tuesday, 'You just have to continue with the effort and we're going to get the bounces eventually.' Tonight, we got a couple. "We talked about the same thing in the dressing room between the second and the third [periods]. I said we have to have a monstrous effort and we have to trust that we're going to get a few bounces. The second half of the season, in the games that have looked like this, we haven't ended up with the bounces and we haven't ended up with the results. Tonight we got rewarded somewhat." RMC surrendered a goal in the final four seconds of the first period to trail 2-1, and though the Paladins had five power plays in the second period, Army got the only goal to take a 3-1 lead into the final 20 minutes. "If you're up 3-1 going into the third you feel like that's a game that you should win," said Army coach Brian Riley. "This is a tough environment to win in. Our guys like playing in this type of atmosphere, it's a great college hockey type of atmosphere, but it's hard to win up here. I thought we were doing a pretty good job. We just couldn't get that fourth goal. That kept them in a position where they were still in the game, within striking distance, and they got the two goals that they needed." With the score 3-1, Robertson made two particularly splendid saves in the RMC goal. He made a glove save against Lyle Gal on a breakaway immediately after West Point finished killing one of its second-period penalties. In the third period, Robertson made a save against Robb Ross, cutting off right wing on a two-on-one break. That meant that when Tyler McTavish scored in the seventh minute of the third period, it was a game again. McTavish, who worked feverishly all night, skated hard up the ice to create a two-on-one with Roman Srutek, and he made no mistake when he got the puck in front of Roberts to make the score 3-2. "It was a pretty typical Army-RMC game," Riley said, "a lot of energy, a lot of emotion. "You've got to give them credit. We were up 3-1, had some chances and Robertson made a couple of saves." ARMY 3 RMC 3 West Point: Goals from Bryce Hollweg, Casey Bickley and Jeff Fearing RMC: A goal and an assist by Nick Cregan, single goals by Adam Purdy and Tyler McTavish The game: Thanks to a late goal Army leads 2-1 after the first period and though they have to kill five penalties, the visitors score the only goal of the second to lead 3-1 Comeback: McTavish scores early in the third and with the RMC goaltender pulled, Cregan banks the puck off Army goalie Brad Roberts for the tying goal with 32 seconds remaining Overtime: Scoreless, with nary a good scoring opportunity for either team The series: Army leads 39-29-7 |
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