Traditionally, the University of Alberta Golden Bears have owned the Canada West in men’s hockey. They’ve won the conference 29 times, more than double the next-best team, Saskatchewan, who has 12. They’ve been national champions 16 times, while no other team has more than 10. They certainly run laps around UBC, who has only won Canada West once, and have never won a national title.
Yet, after this season, perhaps the guard is changing. While it’s premature to project that kind of success for UBC, it’s still a statement win to not just beat the conference’s traditional bogeyman, but also run up the score on them. The Thunderbirds did just that last Saturday, erupting for a five-goal first period to put the game out of reach before the first intermission. They coasted the rest of the way, taking home an 8–4 win against the Golden Bears at home in Father David Bauer Arena, their fourth straight win against Alberta this year, so far beating them by a combined score of 21–8.
One of those wins came the day before this one, with UBC taking home a 3–1 win against Alberta in the first of the back-to-back. While this was the closest game between the two teams thus far this season, with the Golden Bears being a shot away from tying the game in the third before the ‘Birds sealed it with an empty-netter — the scoreboard can be deceiving.
The T-Birds dominated in the shot department, outshooting Alberta 41–16. It was a game of missed opportunities, but they still won purely thanks to the volume of pucks they got on net. Because of this, UBC head coach Sven Butenschon doesn’t see much separation between that game and this 8–4 boat race — only this time, they capitalized on their chances.
“We played a very similar game, we just had the elite finishing plays, execution around the net, getting to rebounds, getting inside position on their defencemen,” he said. “It kind of paid off, all the stuff that we worked on during the week in practice.”
It didn’t take long for karma to start to swing their way. The T-Birds came out firing, dominating possession early, leaving the Golden Bears scrambling to keep play out of their end. Only three minutes into the game, after Alberta got out of their own zone, UBC quickly gathered the weak clearing attempt, immediately pushing back on the rush.
Distributing the puck out to the opposite side of the ice to forward Scott Atkinson, the T-Birds’ quick passing split the Golden Bears’ defence, leaving a massive gap through the middle of the ice. Noticing the extra space, T- Birds captain Chris Douglas broke open for a mini-breakaway, quickly receiving the pass from Atkinson to lift it up over the glove of Alberta goalie Drew Sim.
While the T-Birds had to be overjoyed at the early 1–0 lead, they knew from experience that the one-goal advantage meant little. They had scored at almost exactly the same point in the Friday game, but the game had hung in the balance until the final minute. Unless they could build on their quick start, a team like the Golden Bears wouldn’t go away easily.
Case in point, after a 10-minute stretch of back-and-forth play settling mostly in the neutral zone, Alberta came inches from tying the game at one. Following an offensive zone faceoff for the Golden Bears, Alberta did a good job keeping the puck in the attacking end — potentially their best sustained possession of the game thus far. They were nearly rewarded handsomely for it.
With the puck going back to the point, Alberta defenceman Blake Gustafson found space to shoot, with plenty of traffic in front of the net. Almost as soon as he got the pass on his stick, Gustafson whipped a wrist shot towards the net from distance, bouncing off the post and careening dangerously out to the slot. T-Birds first-year goaltender Nicholas Jones scrambled to find the puck, getting fully turned around in an attempt to somehow save a near-certain goal.
While not the most elegant save, in falling backwards, Jones managed to get in the way of Alberta’s Dylan Ruptash, blocking the point-blank shot that was then deflected out of harm’s way. UBC had managed to avoid disaster, but there was a fair bit of luck involved in keeping their lead. Alberta was starting to push back. After Douglas’ goal, aside from some solid chances from the T-Birds’ first line, the game had evened out. How would UBC respond to Alberta’s best chance of the game? As would become a theme in this one: exceptionally.
Getting possession after Ruptash’s chance, the Thunderbirds immediately flipped the ice, and while Alberta managed to clear the zone, UBC pushed back with speed in the middle of their line change. With the Golden Bears scrambling to get into position, UBC’s Ty Thorpe found the puck behind the net, passing it out front into the slot, hoping his teammates could jump on the loose puck. After both teams took a couple whacks at it, the T-Birds found it, with third-year forward Jake Wright eventually being the one to make contact with it, batting it past Sim for UBC’s second goal of the game. In barely more than a minute, the game had gone from a potential tie to a two-goal UBC lead.
That multi-goal lead wouldn’t last long. A little over a minute after Wright’s goal, any momentum that the T-Birds had was almost immediately snuffed out, with Atkinson taking the game’s first penalty on a cross-check. Just as UBC was starting to pull away, the power play gave the Golden Bears a window of opportunity, and they took advantage of it. Looking to replicate his near-success off a shot from distance earlier, Gustafson tried to put something on net with another wicked wrister. This time, the puck ended up in the back of the net — though likely not how Gustafson intended it.
Almost immediately, Gustafson’s shot was redirected, with UBC’s Kayden Sadhra-Kang getting a stick in front of it. Unfortunately for the ‘Birds, that redirect bounced right to Alberta’s Sam Popowich in the slot, who had the wherewithal to get his stick on it. From there, a puck that was already taking an unconventional path went even more wildly off course, pinballing around in the traffic in front of the crease before sneaking past Jones. The Golden Bears didn’t get a great bounce on Gustafson’s first chance. They got a perfect bounce on his next.
With three minutes left, the game seemed to be on a pretty typical track. UBC had outplayed the Golden Bears, and they would go into the first intermission with a one-goal lead. It was deserved — but it also gave Alberta plenty of room to get back in it. That didn’t happen.
Instead of nursing a one-goal lead, three minutes after the Popowich goal, UBC went into the locker room with a win about as secure as it can be with 40 minutes of play left. In one of their best stretches of the season, the Thunderbirds scored three goals in a minute and 14 seconds.
Alberta’s collapse started almost instantaneously. On the faceoff right after the Golden Bear goal, the T-Birds got a decent break, with Douglas attempting to start the rush into the Alberta zone. Just like UBC had done following their goal, Alberta shot themselves in the foot with a penalty. Douglas was tripped up, and nine seconds after scoring, the Golden Bears were short-handed. And just like Alberta had done, UBC capitalized.
On a gorgeous one-timer from the right dot, Douglas blasted home his second of the game — again perfectly painting it in the top right corner of the net. Sim barely had time to react before the puck hit the twine, and UBC was up two again. These two first period goals were part of what was ultimately a four-point night for Douglas, who had an exceptional game.
“What can you say, when we've [got] Douglas on the power play, ripping that shot,” said Butenschon. “[It was] execution in all situations — was just great to see.”
Douglas’ goal was just the start. Echoing the T-Birds’ second goal, the Thorpe-McNabb-Wright line got to work in the low boards, establishing possession on their first shift after the power play tally. This time, it was Cyle McNabb who threw it out front to Wright, and while Sim was able to get a leg on it, the rebound bounced out to the left side of the net, which was left open in the chaos created by Wright’s shot. Thorpe snuck around behind the net to tap in an easy one, despite Sim’s best efforts to get back over. 4–1 ‘Birds.
That wouldn’t be good enough either. With UBC starting to establish a dominant lead, panic seemed to be setting in for the Golden Bears. In a drastic shift from a minute ago, they just needed to get out of the period alive. They wouldn’t. In an unfortunate series of events for the Golden Bears, their pass up the boards from behind their own net flew way past its intended target, forward Bruce MacGregor, who fell down. Alberta had just turned it over in their own end, with a player sprawled out on the ice.
While, admirably, MacGregor managed to get the puck back, his ensuing cross-ice pass landed perfectly on the stick — of a T-Bird. Receiving a perfect setup pass — albeit from the opponent — UBC’s Reilley Kotai made good use of the chance. While his first shot was stopped, Kotai managed to corral the rebound, spinning around to bury it on the backhand. With that, the Golden Bears, not far removed from a goal of their own, were down four.
It was an astounding response from the T-Birds, turning a solid, but somewhat unremarkable period into a game-sealer. For Butenschon, however, the level of effort his team gave to flip the period on its head wasn’t a surprise — but the expectation.
“I think it's just not letting any complacency creep in your mindset … I just kept trying to plant that seed again this weekend. Forget about yesterday. Don't be satisfied. You’ve got to keep building,” he said.
As Butenschon hints at, more than anything, this game was a character win. It’s clear how much talent they have. They only have two losses despite being 14 games into the season. They’re the highest-scoring team in Canada. They’ve been ranked top-10 nationally for a month. Talent isn’t the question. The next step for teams is — what can you do with that talent? When you get knocked down, how do you respond? For UBC, they answered that question definitively against Alberta again and again.
Looking to salvage something from the game, the Golden Bears managed to cut into the lead only three minutes into the second, with a great shot from Alberta’s Marcus Pacheco beating Jones on his glove side, just as a T-Birds penalty was expiring. While, at 5–2, the ‘Birds weren’t exactly in danger, all comebacks start somewhere. They didn’t give Alberta the chance. One minute later, throwing the puck at the net, a Douglas shot found Atkinson in front of new Golden Bear goalie Ethan Kruger. Atkinson reacted quickly to the shot, putting his stick in the right place to get a textbook deflection over the shoulder of Kruger, restoring UBC’s four-goal lead.
The T-Birds would demonstrate their ability on the counterpunch one more time in the game, near the end of the second. After a Josh Williams goal brought the ‘Birds advantage to 7–2, Alberta’s Gleb Tkach notched another one for the Golden Bears with three minutes left in the frame to pull back within two. They enjoyed it while they could. Getting the puck off a dump-in, Douglas scraped the puck off the boards to a streaking Sasha Mutala, who quickly pivoted towards the net before patiently making his way toward the low slot, placing his shot perfectly in the corner. Kruger had no chance. Going into the third, the T-Birds held that lead, going into the last frame up 8–3.
In less than 40 minutes, the T-Birds had already matched their highest scoring game of the year, and they had done it almost entirely off the counterpunch. UBC’s offensive success came after their opponent scored, not being demoralized, but motivated to not just even the score, but get them back for more.
“They'd come in and they'd score, and then I'd be like, ‘Okay, we got to be ready. How are we going to respond next?’ [Then] we score,” said Butenschon. “So the boys took care of it without me even having to say anything. A great response by the individuals and the lines and everybody on that bench.”
The Golden Bears scored 30 seconds into the third period. It didn’t matter. UBC didn’t have a response to an Alberta goal for the first time in the game, but with a four-goal lead and time wasting to zero, the ‘Birds could be more than comfortable at 8–4. They were. They killed off two penalties and played solid, defensive hockey, letting the offensive success of the first two periods carry them to an easy win.
Yet, while this is obviously a great win for this UBC program, they have their sights set beyond this. Beating Alberta — an opponent they have a 29–50 record against — by four is no longer a cause for massive celebration. It’s a step to something bigger, and Butenschon emphasized as much after the game.
“There's still lots of hockey. The real important games come in February and March and we'll enjoy tonight while we can,” he said. “We'll look at those standings and feel good about it for a day or two.”
From there, the team turns to one of the most important weekends of the regular season, a back-to-back against the fifth-ranked University of Saskatchewan Huskies in Saskatoon. With the Huskies coming from the more competitive CW East Division, this game will be a good measuring stick for the T-Birds against likely the toughest opponent of the year so far.
More importantly for UBC, however, this will be the first time these two squads have matched up since February, when the Huskies beat the T-Birds, taking the Canada West semifinal 2 games to 1. It’s been almost nine months since then, but for Butenschon’s team, it’s still top of their minds.
“Saskatchewan, they ended our season last year,” he said. “So this is an important weekend for us.”
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