Herald photo by Ian Martens
The University of New Brunswick Reds celebrate after their victory over the University of Alberta Golden Bears in the University Cup championship game Sunday, March 17, 2019 at the Enmax Centre.
sports@lethbridgeherald.com@DWoodardHerald
Through his junior career, the Enmax Centre was probably a hostile environment to Mark Rassell.
On Sunday night, it probably felt just like home as Rassell and University of New Brunswick Reds downed the University of Alberta Golden Bears 4-2 to win this year’s Cavendish Farms U Sports University Cup Men’s Hockey National Championship.
The product of Calgary who spent four years down the road with the Medicine Hat Tigers of the Western Hockey League scored the insurance marker to help the Reds to their eighth U Sports title.
At the Enmax Centre, no less.
“I don’t know the announcers name, but when he’s doing his thing for our team and saying my name like that, I love it,” said Rassell, the sole Albertan on the Reds. “Because I remember him screaming goals against and a couple of minuses for me, but I’m really happy.”
The Golden Bears hit the scoresheet on their first shot and power play as another former Tiger, Steven Owre, got things going for Alberta 4:33 in, but the Reds responded quickly as Samuel Dove-McFalls knotted the score at 1-1 2:03 later.
That’s the way it stayed until late in the second when Oliver Cooper and Kris Bennett scored in the final 5:44 of the second for a 3-1 lead after 40.
The Golden Bears pulled to within one 6:46 into the third before Rassell put the game out of reach with a sharp-angle shot past Golden Bears goaltender Zach Sawchenko.
“They were pressing to get that equalizer,” said Rassell. “I knew I had a little bit of time and space and (Jason) Fram was a little flat-footed. He’s probably one of the best defencemen in the country. I wasn’t star-struck, but I had to make sure I got it deep. I chipped around, got the puck, looked off whoever it was on the two-on-one and shot short side.”
Alberta pulled Sawchenko in the final minute, but were unable to get any closer.
“We just ran out of steam at the end,” said Golden Bears head coach Ian Herbers. “I thought we played hard and we played well. Our power play was better tonight and we scored immediately on our first power play, which was huge to get us some momentum. They came out very hard. Obviously, they’re a very good team over there and well-deserving of the championship, they’ve had a great season as well and were the better team today. We had our chances to tie it up and get back into the game and we didn’t capitalize on our chances and they were able to put a couple by. But I love the way out guys competed.”
The Golden Bears roster took a hit in the first period when Luke Philp crashed hard into the end boards, had to be helped off the ice favouring his left leg and didn’t return.
“When the best player in the league and in U Sports is out early it’s obviously going to affect you,” said Herbers. “It changed our lines up. We got the high stick early in the first period, so we were missing a defenceman for a while.”
Reds goaltender Alex Dubeau stopped 32 of 34 shots while Sawchenko made 27 saves.
“It’s such a fine line and a lot of little things that end up the big difference,” said Reds head coach Gardiner MacDougall. “Our theme this year was ‘Grind plus grit and you get glory.’ We had to work through a very competitive league. Here, we had a really solid first game and had a good opponent and got into second year (Saturday) night and then finished it off today with another, top-quality opponent.”
The Reds coach applauded his Alberta player’s performance in the gold medal game.
“He had a two-point effort in his first national final,” said MacDougall of Rassell. “He just finds a way, the puck follows him and he finds a way to contribute on the scoreboard every night. He’s been a really big part of our group this year.”
The Golden Bears roster also featured former Tigers Clayton Kirichenko, Cole Sanford and Trevor Cox.
In the bronze medal game, the St. Francis Xavier X-Men downed the Saskatchewan Huskies 5-1.
