CALGARY – A pair of goals for Colson Gengenbach, a strong showing of the University of Calgary's special teams and a shutout from Carl Tetachuk led the Dinos men's hockey team to a 4-0 win over the UBC Thunderbirds Friday night at Father David Bauer.

The win moves Calgary to 15-10-3 on the year, while UBC drops to 18-7-2 and officially will finish as the No. 2 seed in the West Division.

Although the Dinos capitalized on two power plays and shut down eight penalties, the game started out slow, with the first penalty given to the Thunderbirds at the 15:26 mark in an otherwise scoreless first period. Starting at the 16:02 mark, the Dinos received three consecutive penalties that would feed into the second period of play.

With the six minutes of penalties winding down, the Dinos penalty kill proved their effectiveness early on. Shortly following a Thunderbirds' penalty in the third minute, Calgary's power play went to work, starting the scoring with a rocket from blue-liner Sean Strange. A quick back-and-forth pass to Jake Gricius led to Strange finding a lane through Thunderbirds' and Dinos' traffic out front, sneaking the puck into the back of the net.

Gengenbach found his first tally at the 8:36 mark when Connor Gutenberg picked up a rebound off T-birds goaltender, Brett Mirwald, who faced 30 shots in his outing. Gutenberg passed across to Zach Wytinck who found Gengenbach front and centre, and Calgary's leading goal scorer had no problems putting them up 2-0 on the power play yet again.

"It was huge for our power play to capitalize on their opportunities, which is nice," said Gengenbach. "It feels good to score a few goals and for our team to win, obviously. It felt good to contribute to that, and my teammates saw me in a spot where I could score, which was even better," 

The third period would be very similar to the first, with only Calgary serving three penalties in the final frame. Regardless of the man advantage, UBC failed to get past the Dinos' penalty kill and beat Tetachuk in net, who faced 19 shots on goal in his shutout.

"He's been here for three years and he's always steady. He looked locked in; his edges and feet were set all the time, he didn't give up a lot of rebounds," Dinos head coach Mark Howell mentioned about his netminder. "When he doesn't give up rebounds and he's not moving a lot, he's playing well."

A pair of empty-net goals from Jake Gricius and Gengenbach in the final frame sealed the deal for the Dinos. 

"We obviously need to cut down on the penalty kills. You can't have eight penalty kills going forward, especially in playoffs, you wouldn't win many games like that," Gengenbach stated postgame.

"We want to be in a position of taking three or four (penalties) at maximum, but our penalty kill was great. Our power play worked, we worked on a couple of things and our guys executed," added Howell "Tomorrow, we've got to find that same level of urgency. We're trying to get our game back in order ready for playoffs. We got more healthy guys back tonight, which was important, but we have to be another five to ten percent better tomorrow than we were today because they're going to be really good tomorrow - they're going to be hungry."

The Dinos and Thunderbirds will face off again Saturday night with a 6 p.m. start. Prior to puck drop, the Dinos will recognize their graduating players with a Senior Night celebration at Father David Bauer Arena.

-UC-