CALGARY – With a 4-2 win over the UBC Thunderbirds Saturday evening, the Calgary Dinos men's hockey team completed a weekend sweep to close out the regular season on a high note inside Father David Bauer Arena.

Saturday's game also marked Seniors' Night for the Dinos, recognizing their graduating players Colson Gengenbach, Jake Gricius, Connor Gutenberg, Jadon Joseph, Noah King, Max Patterson and Zach Wytinck prior to puck drop for the final regular season and likely final home game overall this season.

"It's been awesome, and it's been a lot of fun. It was nice to win a championship here, and we'll hopefully do the same this year," said Dinos the fourth-year Gutenberg, who helped the Scarlet & Gold bring home the 2022-23 Canada West banner. "It's nice to get some momentum going into playoffs. It's exciting going to U of A and to hopefully win some games there."

Much like Friday's matchup, the Dinos special teams started strong. An early penalty to the Thunderbirds led to the first goal of the game, thanks to King on the power play. On the entry into their offensive zone, Sean Strange found his captain flying up the wing, and King made no mistake getting it past UBC's goaltender.

"It's good we're scoring on our power play, we're just taking too many penalties," stated Dinos head coach Mark Howell. "Some of the penalties we're taking are unnecessary, so we've got to really look at that going into playoffs, because if you do that, you're not going to be playing long."

The first tying tally came from Thunderbirds' Sam Huo off an end-to-end rush along the boards on the five-on-three advantage. A quick cut to the centre slot and Huo was swerving around Dinos' defenders, allowing him to put the puck up past Carl Stankowski's left shoulder.

Calgary retook the lead at the 15:43 mark, following a big hit behind the Thunderbirds' net, when the puck popped out to Gengenbach. A simple pass over to Gutenberg resulted in a toe-drag shot that ricocheted off UBC's defense and into the back of the net to make it 2-1 Dinos after one.

It wasn't until halfway through the second period when UBC tied the game up again. Capitalizing on yet another Calgary penalty, a centre pass to Ty Thorpe was made before it was fired off to Jake Wright at the point. The forward quickly sniped a shot from the left face-off circle, finding a path through the traffic out front before making it through Stankowski. 

But it wasn't long until the Dinos went back ahead. A quick spin down at the hash marks in the right corner allowed Dallon Melin to pull away from Thunderbirds' defense before weaving through traffic and firing into the top left corner, lighting the lamp and taking a 3-2 lead into the final frame.

"They were going to come out and push. Their urgency in the first and second period was really good, and it took a while for us to get up to speed, but I thought our third period was excellent," Howell commented. "Stankowski was great in the first and second, then in the third we got our footing and we were better."

The lone Dinos power play goal in the third period delivered the dagger early on to the Thunderbirds. Just six and a half minutes in, a drive up the middle by Adam Kydd left the perfect lane to drop the puck off to Gricius, who had no problems pitching one to the back of the net to close out the 4-2 match.

With the regular season in the books, the two teams now turn their attention to postseason play.

The Dinos will hit the road, going up against the University of Alberta in a best-of-three quarterfinal series starting Friday. 

Meanwhile, the T-Birds will host MacEwan on the other side of the bracket as they begin their title defence.

"This weekend we wanted to reestablish our identity of how we play. We haven't played like that in a long time, and I thought we were really good this weekend," Howell said. "We'll watch some of (Alberta's) play from the last couple of weekends just to get a better sense of what we have to do, but a lot of it is going to be about us."

Added Gutenberg, "It'll be fast paced. They're a good team and so are we. It'll be a tough test for us, but it will be two good teams going at it."

-UC-