Waterloo, ON - The Laurier Golden Hawks hosted the Guelph Gryphons in an intense matchup at SunLife Financial Arena on Saturday night. The purple and gold almost mounted a comeback, but came up short, falling 4-3 to their Highway 7 rivals.
The Gryphons opened the scoring five minutes into the first period as Giordano Biondi found the back of the net. Just 30 seconds later, Hunter Brazier put the puck past Christian Propp for his first OUA goal.
As the game progressed into the middle frame, Guelph further extended their lead with a pair of goals from Jacob Winterton and Luke Kutkevicius.
The tide began to shift with less than 10 minutes remaining in the third period. Nick Giunta got the Golden Hawks on the board on a beauty give-and-go play with Caleb Petrie. Mitchell Casey picked up a secondary assist on the goal for his first OUA point.
The Golden Hawks took advantage of a crucial powerplay in the dying minutes of the frame to cut the lead in half. Tyler Davis found some open space behind Guelph's penalty kill and finished a cross-ice feed from Evan Benwell.
Two minutes later with 3:01 remaining in the game, Sam Rhodes found some space in the Guelph zone and let go a laser beam to bring the game within one. The goal was the third-year's third goal in three games.
The purple and gold pulled Propp in the last minute of the game but could not put the equalizer past Guelph's Tanner Wickware.
Christian Propp put up 35 saves on 39 shots. He looked good, as per usual, and made critical saves to keep the Golden Hawks within striking distance.
"Defensively we were bad for 40 minutes. We gave them some gifts and it cost us early on," said Head Coach Kevin Forrest, "we cleaned it up but it is pretty tough to come back from 4-0."
PLUS/MINUS
Minus - D-zone Consistency
Laurier's defensive zone is hot and cold. Some nights, their D-zone is impenetrable and other nights the opposing team almost has free reign. "It's a weird thing right now. We show signs of doing it well and have good stretches. We can do it, we have shown that we can do it, we just have to do it consistently," said Forrest.
Plus + Unfamiliar Faces
Due to injuries, Laurier's lineup saw some unfamiliar faces. Evan Dowd and Robert Strachan drew into the lineup tonight for their first games of the season. They looked pretty good in their season debuts despite facing limited minutes caused by penalty trouble.
"They looked good. They did some good things out there. They haven't played all season so it's just going to take them a couple of games to catch back up to speed."
UP NEXT
The Golden Hawks head down to Kevin Forrest's old stomping grounds at Brock for a Sunday matinee against the league-leading and U SPORTS #5-ranked Badgers.
Brock has defeated Laurier in 14 of their last 15 matchups. Laurier's only win against the Badgers came at home in the playoffs last year.
Puck drop is at 2 p.m. Follow the action on X (formerly Twitter) @WLUAthletics or watch live on OUA.tv.
