Tigers take bite out of hockey X-Men

The X-Men hockey team dropped a 5-4 game to the Dalhousie Tigers in Halifax on Wednesday night.

The Tigers held leads of 3-1 after the first period and 5-3 after the second, leaving the X-Men playing catch-up throughout the game.

Brendon MacDonald (Ryan Stoddard) opened the scoring for the Tigers 5:58 into the game, but X-Man Brennan Wray scored an unassisted marker while shorthanded to tie it up a few minutes later.

Devrin Stonehouse (Daniel Bartek, Jeff Larsh) scored on the power play and Patrick Sweeney (Benjamin Breault) scored with three minutes left in the first period to add to the Dalhousie lead after 20 minutes of play.

The Tigers also drew first blood in the second period as Benjamin Breault (Patrick Sweeney, Trevor MacKenzie) scored at the 3:27 mark. The X-Men cut the lead to 4-2 with a power play goal off the stick of Stephen Simms (Nick Pageau) less then a minute later.

Rob Warner pulled the X-Men to within one goal at 4-3, scoring at the 6:56 mark with assists going to Ryan White and Kurt Jerrett. Ronald Kelly (Brendon MacDonald, Ben vanLare) gave the Tigers back their tow goal lead before the second period was over.

The lone third period goal came at 5:52 from Phil Mangan of the X-Men, assisted by Bryce Swan and Stephen Simms as the X-Men couldn’t score the equalizer late in the game.

Josh Disher hung on for the win in the Tigers net, setting aside 35 X-Men shots. Bryan Gillis took the loss of the X-Men, he played the first period with Joey Perricone suiting up between the pipes for the second and third. The X-Men outshot the Tigers by a 39-28 margin in the game.

Next on the AUS schedule for the fourth place X-Men (9-8-3) is a home game Friday night at 7:00 pm against the nationally seeded No. 9 Saint Mary’s Huskies (10-5-4). They then face the No. 4 ranked Acadia Axemen (13-4-1) in Wolfville on Saturday night.